Showing @ Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Tue 18 – Sat 22 Oct
Clowns have long since lost their innocent image of simple children’s entertainer. Today their most famous incarnations are Krusty the Clown, a swearing and smoking curmudgeon, and The Joker, an anarchistic psychopath. Unaffected by American influence, Russian clown Slava Polunin’s worldwide tour of his Slava’s Snowshow, allows children to rediscover the true intentions of a clown.
Escape to an illusory world, where you will be transfixed by the clowning capabilities of Polunin and his company. The show promises to mesmerise spectators with each daring and dexterous visual display dissolving into the next. The mélange of carefully crafted scenes culminates with a veritable snowstorm that cannot be contained by the limitations of the stage.
Thanks to its simplicity the show has been successful since its first performance in 1994. Influences of Marcel Marceau’s character Bip the Clown and Charlie Chaplin’s silent movie character Little Tramp shine through, seen in Polunin’s use of mime, and the near necessity, because of the show’s longevity, to adopt an alter ego. Winner of numerous awards including a Tony nomination and the Time Out, Olivier and Drama Desk awards for most unique theatrical experience, Polunin combines the skilled clowning ability of his company, the splendor and grace of a ballet and the imagination of a child’s sketchbook. All this makes for a showcase that will appeal to audiences of all ages. Younger viewers will be entranced by the skillful circus tricks and snowstorm spectacle while the older members of the audience can appreciate the mesh of styles from mime and pageantry to the impressive use of lighting and almost indulgent amount of props. Whilst many products aimed at entertaining children are either deemed as gratuitously violent or debilitating to their innocent minds, Slava’s Snowshow cannot be assigned any of these attributes; it is as joyful and innocent as the snow it has found inspiration in.