Hipster Clowns Take Control of a
Theatre and S*it all over It
Let me say first that I like this show.
It's not for everyone. But I liked it. I did not LOVE it.
Although I did love certain parts of it.
Is this a Clown Theatre Show? Yes! But
the theatre for this show should definitely include a bar with rotgut
specials and a floor encrusted with years of yeast, puke, and less
identifiable bodily fluids. It is big, it is cool, it is knockabout,
it is at times vile.
There's a sort of “fuck you”
attitude that really works for the show. Their introductory line-up
is a hot mess of anti-gags – not-so-spectacular bits of acrobacie
that nevertheless fit perfectly for this chaotic band of knockabout
perverts. (I wonder, however, if some of the chaos could be just a
BIT more polished? Sometimes the stage picture and/or the structure
of the gags gets a little clouded in all the chaos.)
And what a band! A self-important Emcee
in a baggy suit; a pudgy, perverted naif escapee from a 2-bit circus,
in full make-up; a spitfire younger sister in a poofy skirt always
challenged to hold her own with her dumber brothers; and a
white-faced Shakespearean fish out of water who is the most naïve of
all. It's definitely a family, one firmly rooted in Rabelaisian
grotesquerie and chaos. I like its dynamic. I love the way the
brothers greet each other with a mimed splooge ritual. I love the
way Tina masquerades as Pedro, the mysongynistic Mexican, in order to
be one of the guys.
I think the lynchpin that keeps this
family connected with the audience is the Shakespearean clown. In
the midst of all the chaos and convex ribaldry (that word was
invented for a show like
this), it sometimes only those sad, confused eyes that keep an open
window to the audience. This is a compliment both to the performer
and to the company, who were smart enough to utilize his talents in
this way.
It is
a smart show. Or at least a “smart-ass” show. My biggest
criticism about would be that it is sometimes a little too smart, a
little too ironically detached, a little too tongue-in-cheek. There
is a premise here about the clowns' mother having just died, which
bookends the show. It is largely throwaway, engendering neither
pathos nor interest, at least in me. How much more interesting
would it be if these disgusting fools actually had a mother whose
recent death they mourned? That's a hell of a way to start a clown
show, but this family could do it, taking us on a journey with more
flavors of the emotional spectrum.
This
piece is recommended highly for those who like shows with big, sweaty
balls, mostly metaphorically speaking.
No comments:
Post a Comment