Brighton Year-Round 2024

Slava’s Snow Show

Oliver King, Svetlana Dvortetsky, Rupert Gavin, Mallory Factor Dan Colman, Wild Yak

Genre: Absurd Theatre, Acrobatics, Children's Theatre, Clown, Comedic, Mainstream Theatre, Physical Theatre, Theatre, Theatrical Clown

Venue: Theatre Royal, Brighton

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

Snow joke, being this precise, and as with all clowns, so serious. At the heart of the snowballs we’re pelted with (especially in the stalls, but that’s the least of it) gleam moments of tragedy and sometimes darkness. Slava Polunin, now 74, has run Slava’s Snow Show since 1993. It arrives helmed and fronted by him to the Theatre Royal Brighton, till December 14^th.

It’s quite the most overwhelming immersive experience I can remember. To a continual fractured narrative and stitched sketches we get divine mine, moments of pathos, gibberish runs and moans with gutturals, nothing of course remotely recognizable as language.

The nearest to speech, and this is the only part I felt twirled in on itself too long, was the yellow-red-trimmed Polunin rushing to a red phone with yellow dial and the reverse (yellow with red), speaking in high voice to one, the other bass grunts out of Boris Godunov or some dark Russian goblin tale. The phone are giant ones. Lasting about four minutes it could be trimmed. And that’s it. Criticism over, the rapture begins.

I’ve seen some fine circus acts including Archaos, and in artistry this equals that spectacle. But in terms of affect, sheer winter smother and as a hazard to any audience who dares to smile distantly, any Snow Show is Slava’s alone. Lighting for instance, a blue gloaming often thrown against snow slabs, both enchants and infuses a chilly magic to the set’s green, yellow and red primaries. You expect a snow Princess to turn up. And one almost does.

Everything’s framed within a dream, first the marching green-clad clowns with Russian hats whose wings rustle a life of their own. A Voyage of the Dream Catcher hoists a hallucinatory sail to strains of Vangelis and the wonderland turns bright and forest-dark by turns. Musically there’s a pulse of classical music like Bolero within the ambience, the deepest being an astonishing scene where Rodrigo’s Guitar Concerto de Aranjuez plays in a non-guitar arrangement to a man who has a thing about arrows. Narrative is like that of a child, intuitive, fluid and here naturally seamless. And the finale. Let’s say light and Carmina Burana have never astonished this much.

You must see this yourself and I’ll avoid spoilers – but if you think Mordor can’t stray out of Lord of the Rings, well beware of large buzzing things taking flight, sounding like, well quadcopters. This is handled so deftly that though a homeopathic tincture of Russian dark infuses Slava’s imagination, it’s brushed away like tears before you can murmur “aaah…”

I have not detailed what might happen to the audience. If you think you’re above it all in the gods, you will be touched.

Performers are universally the finest and most limber, insouciant beings ever to hurl a snowball. Apart from Slava Polunin these are Artem Zhimo, Vanya Polunin, Francesco Bifano, Chris Lynam, Nikolai Terentiev, Yutri Musatov, Aelita West.

Outstanding.

Created and Staged Slava Polunin, Director and Scenography Viktor Kramer & Slava Polunin, Costume Design and Special effects Slava Polunin, Sound Roman Dubinnikov, Slava Polunin, Technical Director Dmitri Ushakov, Stage Tech Mathieu Simon, Sound Tech Alistair Kerslake, Lighting Tech Alexander Pecherskiy

Company Manager Anna Hannikainen, Costumer Julia Shumakova, , Production Management Harry Arymtage for  TPO Global, CSM Maria Zemlinskaya

Published December 13, 2024December 13, 2024 by Simon Jenner