Before The Wow Show started, the audience was graced with a visit from the two angels of Send in the Angels. It was a short numero, but well worth it. There is something spot-on about these two. They are gentle, strange, naïve. There is also something foreboding about them, like they might at any moment pull out large stiletto knives and stab us. (They did not.) Their games were simple but sometimes elusive, enigmatic, maintaining coherence through their strong relationship. The characters reminded me of some of the clowns I've seen and enjoyed very much from the Russian company, Litsedei: gentle characters played with a very strong sense of integrity who, on the clown continuum from “jokester next door” to “visitor from beyond”, are very much the latter. They were strange and delightful.
And then on to The Wow Show, which was a very different treat for the audience. This is a show for children in which a lovable man-child uses a number of dramatic conceits to showcase his variety skills. First, he discovers a number of objects in the space, including his hat. Then he finds a list telling him to clean up his mess. Through the clean-up process we go through a sort of “greatest hits” of variety acts: a few hat tricks, some ball juggling, devil sticks, club juggling, and cigar boxes.
The premise works this way: Enzo (the clown) picks up an object, realizes its trick potential, does a few tricks, and then tosses the object into a rubbish bin. This is OK as a premise, if a little repetitive. This first half of the show ends abruptly when Enzo decides that the cleanup is taking too long and clumsily piles all of the collected objects upstage right. Again, that's OK as a solution, but it very unsatisfying, like the entire premise of the cleanup was just a cheap ruse. On a structural level, one could say that is appropriate. The cleanup IS just a structural provocation for the clown to get his groove on. However, it is a provocation for the CLOWN to get his groove on, not the just the variety performer. If the dramatic premise really is nothing, then take the nose off. If the show is to be a clown show, then we have to have the cooperation of two worlds simultaneously: the fierce pursuit virtuosic feats and compelling structure, and also the fierce pursuit of the clown in his given circumstances.
Enzo starts off the show nicely with a gentle sense of discovery, marvelling at the space, the audience, his own hat, the skills he discovers, only being able to muster a drawn-out, “wow!” in many instances. But that character is shattered by the borderline disrespect he pays his objects once he's completed his tricks and decides to move on to his next structural checkpoint. It feels dramatically inconsistent.
The second part of the show is sort of a kids' version of the David Shiner “Photographer” bit from Fool Moon. (In mentioning Shiner, I am not accusing Enzo of plagiarism, or lack of originality—this is his bit—I merely use Shiner as a reference.) Enzo's version has child audience volunteers playing princes and princesses on a quest. It's a cute bit, and the performer obviously has logged a lot of time working with young children. However, again I found Enzo's character a bit dramatically inconsistent. He has too many one-off jokes for the adults that break his character, like we can see the performer winking behind the clown to the parents, going, “I know this is stupid, but hey, they're kids.” Maybe that's a bit harsh, but somehow Enzo's texts, beyond his very nice, “wow”, seem unsupported. Sometimes worse, they seem like a disrespect for the premise he sets up, much like his disrespect for his objects. Once or twice, an uncomfortable image of a carnie, saying, “hi, boys and girls,” in one breath, and taking a piss in the next, popped into my head. Not that that would be a bad premise! It would be a great premise for an adult show, in the fine tradition of Bob Newhart's Uncle Freddie Show sketch, or the disgruntled Santa in the Jean Sheppard's A Christmas Story, or Billy Bob Thornton's Bad Santa. But in order to make this structure work, Enzo would have to go a lot farther, get a lot nastier, and that probably would put an NC-17 rating on his show. As it is, the one liners do not drive us into exquisite grotesque. Rather, they just deflate the established world.
Comparing these two shows brings me to a thought about bridges between the clown and the audience. The first few minutes of any show are alienating, as the audience acclimates itself to the world of the particular performance. A distance exists between the two parties. The connexion between those parties is like a bridge. The performer has a choice in how far s/he chooses to walk out on to the bridge in order establish a connexion. But distance is not the only factor. The performer can also wave from the far side of the bridge, in order to get the audience's attention and slowly beckon them over. Walking out on the bridge, three quarters of the way towards the audience is a very convex, aggressive choice. Standing one's ground and inviting people over, or being compelling enough to get them to come over, is a very concave choice. Both can work in the appropriate context. In the case of Send in the Angels, the clowns are very concave. They evoke a world from beyond and beckon us to it. In The Wow Show's case (and this is what was so frustrating about it), Enzo the clown starts off with a relatively concave choice, evoking a gentle world of discovery. But just as he gets us there, he moves his position on the bridge and brings us back closer to where we were when we walked in. A lot of this move, I think, is unintentional, and has to do with a certain lack of care for the clown world he so meticulously established. I think the kids enjoyed both shows, but (and this is presumptuous as Hell) I think the angels will stick longer in their minds.
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