Showing @ Festival Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 6 Dec @ times vary (and on tour)

Clowns. Love them or loathe them. Fellini revered them. Chaplin reinvented them. It would be a hard-hearted bastard that didn’t fall in love with the Russian genius Slava Polunin.

If there’s a point midway between sadness and joy, it’s clowning and there’s something of the Waiting for Godot in Slava’s show: it’s funny, touching, silly and deep all at once. Slava creates and stages his show and has been working since the mid-1960s. His work is legendary and not to be missed.

The magic of this show – over and above the universal and often profound emotions conveyed in mime and body language – is assisted by some spectacular special effects. The weird felt backdrop (at once comforting and creepy) creates an other-worldly setting and offers some early scary moments (not recommended for the under-fives). And although some of the music choices are lazy (Vangelis and Carmina Burana played at full pelt) it’s when all the elements come together that the Snowshow works best and becomes something very unexpected and magical. Sometimes a simple effect like confetti falling from the ceiling can be unaccountably moving and transfixing. Sometimes the effects are mindboggling, as when the audience is wrapped in a vast cobweb (yes, really). At one point our hero plays with huge balloons like some insignificant everyman who has slow-motion power over the planets. It’s simple and brilliant. When I left the theatre I looked up at the night sky. There was a full moon.