Theatre: Slava's Snowshow

Created and staged by Slava Polunin

Performed by Derek Scott, Robert Saralp, Andrey Klimak, Evgeny Perevalov, Ira Selberstein, Nikolai Terentiev, Aelita West and Bradford West

Regal Theatre

Until August 5

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.

Slava Polunin has inherited centuries of European clowning tradition; 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.

Its great device is the irrepressible humour that bubbles up from under the sadness of the clown. 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 eighty or so minutes.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian