2007 New York Clown Theatre Festival Reviews
Tapate / Cover Yourself
reviewed by Kat Chamberlain
Oct 25, 2007
If theatre is all about depicting the human condition, then clowning is perhaps about reminding us how much we enjoy that condition. All the trials and tribulations, even accidents and failures, are crystallized into a trip down a funhouse memory lane. The clowns are seemingly doing things so absurd that we would never do them ourselves, but in fact, we have been there and done that in one form or another. That's why they are so funny.
Such is the case in Tapate, or Cover Yourself, a hilarious offering by a two-clown troupe from Spain, Pez en Raya. The story is about a fight gone wild, and a wife first convicted, then escaping from prison after hitting and kicking her husband to death. Not exactly daily encounters in most of our lives, but they tell the story in such ingenious ways that everything seems to make perfect sense in their surreal world that we instantly recognize as our own.
The show starts with a disclaimer of some sort. Christina Medina and Joan Estrader come out as themselves—except each wears a fake long nose—and talk about "humor," sitting on two of the dozen cardboard boxes that make up the entire set. "Our jokes are not as good as you think," says Medina, "one night they work, one night they don't." So, "don't expect anything." They go on to talk about "involved jokes" and "prepared jokes." But Medina particularly wishes to warn us about those coming from her partner. "We don't care," she informs Estrader after one of his attempts supposedly falls flat. We are laughing.
Then they start their tale of a murder case resulting from a fierce fight between a couple over television watching. It's social commentary disguised as slapstick with dances and songs, and you never know where they are going with it until the actions connect with one funny bone after another. The wife tries to flee the country, but Inspector "Ricky Martina" rushes to the airport to stop her. Estrader as a rookie cop conducts the funniest "racial profiling" I've seen at the airport. The wife gets caught and sent to jail, and is warned to keep quiet and not to "play the piano or with the washing machine." Then she escapes and kills again…
The farcical plot merely serves as a platform for imaginative ways to convey actions and thoughts. I have a feeling that they can tell any story and make it fascinating. It stretches the boundaries of sketch comedy in ways that make our inner child giddy, because it all ends up in the imagination territory.
Medina and Estrader play multiple characters, exuding a loose, huggable, and often fearless charm. Their humor is also mature and truthful, touching upon sex, class, and politics, while being entirely accessible and subtle. I see no reason why children should not share the fun. Everyone can find a solid case of belly laughs here. All-purpose clowning, which in this case consists of anything from physical comedy and mime to word games, seems alive and well. And that's a very nice thing indeed.
Presented by Pez En Raya
Savage Amusements
reviewed by Chris Harcum
Oct 21, 2007
Anne Goldmann stars as Svetlana Flamingo in Savage Amusements at The Brick, part of their second annual Clown Theatre Festival. One part interactive street theatre, one part gymnastics demo, and a gazillion parts funny, this 60-minute solo extravaganza about a multi-talented Transylvanian mail-ordered bride abandoned in a Florida trailer park earns its green card.
The playing area is decorated with a clothes line draped in animal-printed potential, a central Astroturf rectangle, four pink flamingoes (named Igor, Boris, Mikhail, and Ken), a mini grill, a trash can barrel, and five tiny Holstein cow statues later used for "moo" lighting. Svetlana enters, looking like Ziggy Stardust's daughter, gyrating, whoo-ing, and passing out candy. She immediately displays her ability to fire off triple meta asides as though they were scripted. Throughout the rest of the performance she keeps up this fine jazz-like riffing on the scripted material, making references and recalls about members of the audience, much to everyone's amusement. Her crowd work, which is playfully sexual and mostly self-effacing, is some of the finest I have ever seen.
We are welcomed to her trailer park, the Punta Villa RV Village, while she does some eccentric dancing. An inflated and supposedly dangerous alligator is passed from the comically unenthusiastic Stage Manager over the heads of the audience. Svetlana wrestles, tickles, humps, scratches, and tames the beast showing her bravado and the deplorable conditions she must escape. We are taken back to Transylvania where she meets Mark Walters in a catalogue from Don't Be Alone Services. Mark is represented here by a Ken doll and he brings her to America. He then abandons her for five years. "That's one year for every finger on this hand," explains a distressed Svetlana. It seems justified that she rips the Ken doll apart and stuffs him under the lid of the mini grill.
Back in the present, Svetlana expresses her desire to become a B-movie star. Her plan is to wow them with her "Gymnastic Genie" routines. We are then surprised, astounded, and surprisingly astounded by her humorously inventive and athletically impressive arsenal of flexible showmanship. We get The Resurrected Bug, What a Girl Will Do for a Buck, The Upside-Down Flamingo, and many others. In simple terms, they are what happen when you put a Cirque du Soleil gymnast and clown in the same body. The eleven o' clock song of this section, Slave Princess of the Jungle, involves three game males from the audience. Her mastery in this speaks volumes about her experience from years of working with audiences. It is also hilarious.
The overall delightful effect of Savage Amusements is like watching your niece put on funny show in your backyard, except your niece happens to be a hot clown gymnast woman and you aren't related.
Presented by Daredevil Chicken Club
The Glories of Gloria Revue
reviewed by James Comtois
Oct 21, 2007
It takes a tremendous amount of effort and skill to play awkward and clumsy, because either: a) moments of grace and flair can sneak in; or b) the performance can just end up being genuinely awkward (and therefore unpleasant to watch).
Fortunately, Canadian clown and Cirque du Soleil alum Mooky knows how to play awkward and clumsy (rather than just be awkward and clumsy), which she demonstrates in her very funny and energetic one-person show, The Glories of Gloria Revue, playing at the Brick's Clown Theatre Festival.
Mooky plays Gloria, an aspiring actress who wants to create a large spectacular revue. Unfortunately, she's the only one in this extravaganza, which means not only are there no large chorus line numbers, there are no stage hands to help, either.
No matter. Gloria will fake it for as long as she can, hoping that the audience won't notice that many of the acts are either puppets, prerecorded film performances, or herself in different wigs and costumes (posing as "special guests").
This is a funny, funny show that made me laugh a lot. Mooky is a very energetic and captivating performer who has the energy and stamina of a large ensemble cast and large backstage crew (to, of course, compensate for her lack of one).
Rather than just go through her multiple acts (which are all incredibly fun), let me just cite one specific portion that should give you a decent example of what type of show this is. There's one point in the performance where she needs Grampa to dance for us to buy her some time to change costumes ("Grampa" is in fact a short black & white film of an old man dancing projected on a screen).
The DVD player in her backstage area to show Grampa isn't working. She starts to berate Grampa for making her look bad, sounding genuinely scared and flustered. The DVD player still isn't working. It eventually skips to a bit with some dancing ponies. "NO, Ponies!" she yells. "Ponies, No! It's not your turn yet!"
Finally, Grampa plays. But she still needs more time. She tells Grampa to go on again. Of course, during all of this, the curtains in front of the video screen are still shut. Halfway through Grampa's encore "performance," we hear Gloria go, "Oh, have the curtains been shut the whole time? That's no good."
Now, is this an example of lightning-fast ad-libbing to cover a genuine technical snafu or all "just part of the show?" Either way, it doesn't matter: the day I went, neither the rest of the audience nor I could stop laughing.
There are definitely other funny scenes, sketches, and dances in The Glories of Gloria (another favorite bit of mine was an impromptu dramatic acting scene done with a member of the audience involving strategically placed tiny cue cards for her unwitting acting partner), but I think it may be best if people just go see the show and discover them on their own, and see just how funny calculated awkwardness is.
Presented by Mooky
The Maestrosities: The Coolest Band Ever!
reviewed by Melanie N. Lee
Oct 24, 2007
Ironically billed as "The World's Coolest Band," the Maestrosities clown troupe provides an entertaining hour of a goofball concert laced with sight gags and verbal quips. Two women and four men on accordion, clarinet, ukulele, tuba, trumpet, and stainless steel spoons play hit songs over the decades from "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" to "Material Girl."
Maestro, the bespectacled leader on ukulele, sings "I Ought to Be in Pictures" while his wife Deirdre, a frustrated would-be opera diva, argues, "I don't think that song describes you very well; it's about someone handsome…" Princess Pennie, a diminutive accordionist in a pink tutu, flirts with an elderly man in the audience. Aldo, described as a parolee sentenced to playing spoons with the band as community service, first appears running through the stage and the audience in a straitjacket, shouting expletives. Aldo sings "Eye of the Tiger" while doffing the straitjacket and using its belt as a whip. Louis Uggler, the nerdy trumpeter, is nearly invisible (though I learned the clown/musician who plays Louis had an admirer in the audience). Chauncey, the soft-spoken tuba player, has his moments when he begins the show blasting "Also Sprach Zarathustra," and later when an American flag springs from his tuba during "God Bless America." Sprinkled throughout are impressive tricks such as juggling ukuleles, and gags such as handing an audience member a set list written on a napkin, with which Aldo later wipes his sweaty forehead.
All the performers play their instruments well and clown quite admirably. Jenny Lee Mitchell as Deirdre gets to show off her classical stylings. Gina Samardge, who dances and has a good voice, stands out as the flirtatious Princess Pennie, as does Glen Heroy as the loud, explosive, powerfully-voiced Aldo. David Gochfeld as Maestro is a humorous, striking sight, but his voice is often too soft to carry over the instruments, a fault occasionally shared by Samardge. For a bandleader, the clown Maestro isn't front-and-center often enough. Rounding out the cast are Rod Kimball as Louis and Andy Sapora as Chauncey.
Although the show was entertaining, I kept wishing the performers had a little more verve, more oomph, and the show more cohesiveness and a more obvious plot line. After all, one goes to the theatre expecting a play, not a mere concert. The promotional materials, which I saw but the audience didn't, promised a dramatic build and climax that just didn't happen. The promos also said the Maestrosities are developing a play from their characters, and they certainly have raw material for a good one-act play. With mostly well-performed, comically-twisted songs that, unlike musical theatre songs, don't advance the plot, a clown play interwoven with a concert will probably need more time to unfold than the hour the Maestrosities had in this show.
Presented by Maestrosities
Solo: A Two-Person Show
reviewed by Richard Hinojosa
Oct 21, 2007
Where would funny be without not funny? Like light without shade, it would just become a dull wash of monotonous winks and nudges. Matt Chapman and Josh Matthews are well aware of this in their new show, Solo, and so they toss in an element of profound loss and it works perfectly as the shade to their hilarious beam of light.
The show opens with death and then springs into the Put-Your-Short-Pants-On Dance. This pattern is repeated throughout the show as two brothers unveil bits of their tragic story in between childlike games built of pure, unadulterated imagination. We are taken into the jungle where toasted bagels are our only protection from the stirs of dangerous beasts. We go to a mountaintop where gangs of dreaded mountain goats bleat threats right in your face. The brothers also relive memories of their lives together and of their last moment together. Sometimes they fight and sometimes they play but they always manage to jab you in the ribs with their tale.
I wasn't expecting much of a story. I figured I'd laugh here and there at some awkward situations, but Chapman and Matthews tell a great story. The comedy moves really fast but they slow down and reflect and allow the story to simmer. Both are very agile making the highly physical comedy look easy and natural even when they get absurdly acrobatic. This is one the finest comedy duets I've seen. Their chemistry is as if they're brothers in real life playing off each other with consistent undertones of a lifetime spent together. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much in one evening.
They keep it simple. There's no set except a chair and suitcase filled with props. Chapman does a great job animating a little devil puppet in one game that they play. He also twists and molds his face into some of the funniest reactions. Matthews's timing is impeccable. He launches into every scene with exceptional vigor and conviction. Their dances and acrobatics are hilarious and very well-choreographed. The show is a part of a clown theatre festival but I'm not sure if what they do is clowning. It's physical theatre with a hysterical, tragic, and often absurd story. To me, the story within it seems to transcend clowning. The lighting looks great in the small black box at the Brick and the music, courtesy of David Crabb, fits perfectly with every mood swing.
I am not entirely sure about the significance of the title of the show, Solo. They may call it that because ultimately one of them ends up alone or possibly because it was only supposed to be one brother the whole time. The brothers' relationship is supported by their game playing. They imply what it might be like if the games stopped but they never reveal what it would really be like if they no longer had the games. We never see one of them alone on stage. They contrast comedy and tragedy throughout, but they never really contrast together and alone.
I had a great time at this show. The Brick has hosted another great festival. I enjoyed all the shows I saw in this year's New York Clown Theatre Festival. You only have two more chances to check this one out so I'd get there early. If you have to stand in line don't worry about it, Solo, is worth every minute of your time.
Presented by Under the Table Theatre
