1 hour ago
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They are a forlorn lot, this bunch who shuffle glumly to the front of the stalls. In white face, funeral veils, mismatched jodhpurs and tailcoats, they gaze across the auditorium to the timeless strum of a folk song. They cheer up after the curtain rises and – to audience applause – their big top reveals itself in all its weatherbeaten glitz.
This is where these motley figures belong and for much of Geoff Sobelle’s characteristically uncategorisable show, they play it exactly as you would expect clowns to play it – albeit with some scenes more entertaining than others. There are musical skits, sight gags with false hands and spare legs, upturned boxes of bees and bags of popcorn thrown from the stage with lawless abandon.
There is an innocence about these clowns. Like children, they are clumsy and needy. They seek our approval and, having got it, are unsure what to do with it.
Are they merely here to make us laugh or could they be symbols of something else – pioneers muddling by in the early days of a new nation, perhaps? Amid the silent comedy, there is a Yankee Doodle energy and the trappings of Americana. The turning point comes in a wild west routine that begins with knockabout humour – three cowboys entering a saloon on horseback – and turns darker as a banana-toting gunman starts firing. The bullets go everywhere and an American bald eagle drops from the sky.
The rampant individualism of the American dream finds form in a human cannonball – the hubris of go-getting accomplishment combined with platitudes about everyone working together.
Commissioned by the Edinburgh international festival as part of its commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Clown Show goes from the joy of discovery to a planet in peril, a Spanish song of liberty and a phalanx of ICE agents. Anarchic exuberance becomes nihilistic excess.
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At King’s theatre, Edinburgh, until 30 August
