Blizzard of comic action
THEATRE
Slava’s Snowshow
By Slava Polunin
Regal Theatre
REVIEW DAVID ZAMPATTI
The circus is well and truly in town. The acrobats and jugglers are over at Crown in the Empire Spiegeltent but the clowns have taken over the Regal Theatre in Slava's Snowshow.
And what a show it is.
The creation of Russian master clown Slava Polunin has a finale that packs a wallop as spectacular and riveting as anything I've seen in a theatre. I don't want to describe it because, hopefully, you'll experience it for yourself one day, and I'd hate to spoil the thrill as it engulfs you.
Ironically, this tornado of action comes at the end of a show that is often played in stately slow motion, while the equally memorable finale of Empire, the mesmerising Sanddornbalance Act performed by Memet Bilgin, is a still point at the end of a show full of breakneck movement. There's more than one way to skin a cat.
There's more to Slava and his show than its climax as well. He has inherited centuries of European clowning tradition. It's a line that runs through folklore to Shakespeare, from Commedia dell'Arte to Pierrot and Columbina, Punch and Judy, and Laurel and Hardy, from the Little Tramp to the tramps in Waiting for Godot, from Mo McCackie to Louis CK.
It's a tenacious art form, surviving in the face of apparently more marketable entertainments because of its enduring ability to capture the imagination of the child in us.
Its great device is the irrepressible humour that bubbles up from under the sadness of the clown (the program aptly quotes Charlie Chaplin: "Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up but a comedy in long-shot"). At the start of the show, the Yellow Clown (the wonderful Robert Saralp) shuffles on stage, full of sighs, his eyes, in the lugubrious mask of his clown's face, downcast, a noose in his hands. Naturally, faced with a man at the end of his rope, we start laughing, and we rarely stop for the next 80 or so minutes.
Along the way, Saralp and the six hilarious Green Clowns who aid and abet him, lead us through routines as old as their wacky profession, enhanced by some wonderful production values.
This is a big show with all the bells and whistles of the modern extravaganza on board. There's an all-over-the-joint collection of music from Ravel's Bolero to Carmina Burana, the Chariots of Fire theme to Vangelis that is so schmucky and hackneyed that it shouldn't work (but, of course, does brilliantly), and everything that can be floated, sprayed, pumped or dropped on the stage, from smoke to glitter, bubbles to spider webs.
It's all colour and movement that both relieves and concentrates the beautifully formed performances of the clowns themselves, those small glances, deliberate movements and tiny gestures that say so much by doing so little.
And if they look over their shoulder from time to time, or prick their ears for a rumble in the distance, it's because they can feel a storm approaching. And when it arrives - oh boy! Wowee!
Slava’s Snowshow ends on Sunday.
