SNOW IN JULY

Several years ago now, I posted on the subject of clowns and the not-entirely-irrational fear that they engender in some people.

Among those of the clowning profession whom I mentioned was the Russian genius, Vyacheslav Ivanovich Polunin or Slava (left), whose wonderfully bizarre, infinitely heartwarming entertainment, Slava's Snowshow will be touring the UK this autumn and returning to London in December.

Simon Callow, never an actor given to underemphasis, described Snow show as "The single most beautiful thing I have ever seen in a theatre in my life", and I couldn't agree more.

David and I saw Slava at the Old Vic many years go and it has remained with us both as one of the most astonishing, funny and moving experiences we have ever enjoyed.


Here's a film of part of Slava's Snowshow that captures something of what it was like to be in audience: but without the full shiver-making frisson as the furious tempo of Carl Orff's 'O Fortuna' from Carmina Burana mounts to its scorching crescendo as you are literally dazzled and blasted by a blinding blizzard of brilliant cold whiteness.

If you catch even a hint of Slava's magic here – go and see the real thing!

LAUGH, CLOWN, LAUGH!

Writing the other day about CLOWNS, reminded me of a meeting I once had with the master comic (a contemporary clown, indeed) Max Wall - who, I recently discovered from a blue plaque, was born just round the corner from me in Mowll Street, Kennington.



I had been to see Max - whose stage persona, as Professor Wallofski owed something to the Great Grock - in his one-man show, Aspects of Wall, and, after the show, I went backstage with a radio producer with whom I was working at the time who was planning to cast Max in a seemingly unlikely role as Charon, the Ferryman working the River Styx in Orpheus' Underworld.

As I might have expected, without the characteristic tights, tailcoat and wig, this was a very different Wall to the buffoon who held court on stage. True, the tombstone teeth were very much in evidence whenever his face cracked into a lopsided smile, but he was a small, weary man with sorrowful eyes and a voice that fell away in a sadly dying cadence. And, as he wiped away the sweat and the graesepaint, it was impossible not to notice how his hands were clawed by the crippling effects of arthritis: I could only guess at the pain that he had to break through every night simply to complete his show...

Like all great comics, Max Wall was intensely serious about the business of being funny which is undoubtedly why he was also able to plumb the dark depths of Beckett in both Waiting for Godot and Krapp’s Last Tape as well give as a stuning portrayal of Osborne’s grotesque entertainer, Archie Rice.


I realised then - as I did again, on a later occasion, when encountering Frankie Howerd - that the old clichés about the melancholy man behind the clown's smile are all too true.

Which reminds me of a much quoted, and doubtless apocryphal story, about Grock and one which, apparently, had also been told a century earlier about Grimaldi.

This is how I tell it...


A man goes to see his doctor, wracked by depression and feelings of despair.

The doctor examines the patient and can find nothing wrong other than the all too obvious sickness of the soul.

“You are perfectly fit,” says the doctor, “you just need to lighten your spirits! Why not go and see the Great Grock? No one can see Grock and remain depressed and unhappy! Yes, my friend, a performance by Grock is the only medicine you require!”

“But you do not understand,” replies the patient with a sigh, “I am the Great Grock!”

CLOWNING AROUND!

A funny thing to be scared of ---- CLOWNS! And yet, several regular readers commented on my recent blog about ventriloquists, puppets and toys and how they seem to want to come alive!, that they found clowns scary…

This I completely understand!

The first clown face I saw was when I was about four years old: it was a cut-out mask from the back of a cereal box and it was worn by the boy living in the house behind ours who kept looking out of an upstairs’ window at me until I was scared to the point of tears. The white face with its criss-crossed-out eyes, red nose and watermelon mouth was made all the more terrifying by having the fixed expression of a mask.

The only solution to my abject terror was for my mum to go and buy a packet of the said cereal and make up another mask for me from the same series ("Collect all six and scare the s*** out your friends!"); this done I was then able to stand in the garden and leer back at my tormentor!

I was taken to Olympia, maybe a year later, to see Bertram Mills' Circus and was again scared to death, this time by genuine clowns who leapt out of the ring and came clambering about amongst the audience in their oversized shoes and voluminous checked suits with water-pistol button-holes in their jackets.

They lurched along carrying what looked like heavy buckets of water and everyone - except me! - screamed with laughter when it was discovered that they only contained confetti. I just screamed - and had to be taken out...

I remember seeing Walt Disney's Dumbo for the first time and hating the sadistic clowns with their slasher smiles who were so cruelly vicious to that sweet little elephant!

(An interesting side note here: Dumbo was completed during the final days of the animators' strike that almost crippled the Disney Studio in 1941 and the silhouettes of the clowns, seen through the circus tent, are said to be caricatures of the strike leaders! Confirmation of our belief that all clowns are dubious subversives...)

The first time I felt comfortable in a clown's presence was when Coco the Clown - who, strictly speaking, was not a ‘clown’ but an ‘Auguste’ - visited my school one day to talk to us about road safety. Coco (Nicolai Poliakoff, 1900-1974) completely charmed me with his size 58 boots, his funny stand-up hair and his belisha beacon walking stick.


Of course, it is not necessary to like or enjoy clowns to appreciate their fascinating role in the history of theatre and entertainment being, in fact, part of a tradition that predates even Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837), whose his name became, for years, the generic term for a clown - ‘Joey’ - and who was the subject of a biography by no less a scribe than Charles Dickens…


Later, another famous clown legend would emerge: the great Grock (Charles Adrien Wettach, 1880-1959; below left), who made audiences laugh when the strings on his fiddle disappeared - because he was holding the instrument upside down! - but who was a consummate musician and highly educated man, being able to play no less than 24 instruments as well as speaking many languages. America, meanwhile had its own classic clown, Emmett Kelly (1898-1979) who created the sorrowful-looking Weary Willie (below right), inspired by the hobos of the American depression.

Kelly, Grock, Coco and Grimaldi were - like many clowns, I'm sure - genial, kindly fools but the painted face that hides the real face has led to any number of less salubrious characters donning the white pallor and the greasepaint grin from James Stewart as a wanted criminal masquerading as Buttons the Clown in the 1952 film, The Greatest Show on Earth (in which Emmett Kelly made a cameo appearance), via Batman’s nemesis, the Joker, to the demonic Pennywise the Dancing Clown in Stephen King’s It.

Aside from meeting the avuncular Coco, the only clown by whom I have felt utterly unthreatened - and whose brilliant comedy moved me to both laughter and tears - is the Russian genius, Slava (Vyacheslav Ivanovich Polunin), creator of the unforgettable Slava’s Snowshow: a tour de force of theatrical magic that is filled with wonder and delight, beauty, sadness and a resigned appreciation of the absurdity of life…


Grock used to be called “The King of Clowns”; today, Slava is known simply as “The Best Clown in the World”. He is, apart from anything else, a much needed antidote to all those sinister, scary, menacing clowns about whom some us still have nightmares - and what more nightmarish creature could one conceive than this unlikely act from a vintage performance of Bertram Mills' Circus...?