Prague Fringe 2015
Everything’s Possible, Nothing’s Available
Neil Frost (England)
Venue: Museum of Alchemists
Festival: Prague Fringe
Low Down
Who’s that knocking at the door? It’s Neil Frost. Well, you’d better let him in, it’s getting cold. A riotous clown show telling the story of a nervous man who decides to change the monotony of his life by taking a risk.
Review
This is a riotous clown show telling the story of a nervous man who decides to change the monotony of his life by taking a risk.
At first I had no idea what was going on. A man makes several attempts to enter through a trapped door in the stage floor. Finally he does enter and we are intrigued from as to where he will go next. Then before you know it, you realize that it is not only Neil Frost who is telling this story but we audience members are just as much in charge. For example, when an audience member is called to action what they do influences how and where the story will unfold because the performer includes all the audience reactions in his show. At every turn I was engaged and wanted to find out how the story he was telling was going to proceed.
This show is a performance piece that pushes the cutting edge of mime and interactivity. There are almost no words spoken and even the few that are, are barely said out loud or completely pronounced. Neil Frost is obviously a very experienced clown and shows off his talents in this charming creation about a nervous man. He encourages the audience to be his sound effects department without specifying exactly what sounds the story needs. You get what he is going for, or sometimes you don’t and he will be happy to wait for you to figure it out. Often the waiting alone becomes hysterically funny. Once the audience gets the idea, the story proceeds or goes back to the beginning to put more and more sections together until the entire narrative unfolds. Meanwhile we in the audience have been watching for our cues and rewarded with candy thrown at us for providing the appropriate sounds. At one point a man and woman are brought to the stage from disparate parts of the audience and encouraged to kiss. Mr. Frost is so endearing that you cannot help but play along.
This show made amazing use of stage, including entrances and exits from the most unlikely of places and hidden signage revealed in at least three different languages, plus phonetics, for those of us who can not read Japanese, or what ever language that sign was in.
