‘Didn’t I come to bring you a sense of wonder?/ Didn’t I come to lift your fiery vision bright?/ Didn’t I come to bring you a sense of wonder in the flame?’. (Van Morrison ‘A Sense of Wonder’ 1985).
Legendary Russian clown and entertainer Slava Polunin has been touring his show Slava’s SNOWSHOW for twenty years now and it continues to bring audiences around the world a sense of wonder… of magic… of joy.
We are transported into dream-like places- a bed becomes a boat in a storm-tossed sea, a woman is wrapped in cellophane and becomes flowers in a vase; a child walks in amazement inside a bubble; SLAVA boards a train and then becomes the train, his chimney-pot hat billowing smoke; and a web of unspun cotton envelopes the audience. The stunning finale sees a letter turn into snowflakes, and the flakes turn into a snowstorm, which whirls around the auditorium, leaving the audience ankle-deep in snow.
It’s the kind of show that you just don’t want to end. It does sadly, like everything…
When the clowns came to the front of the stage, two yellow clowns, six green clowns, to take off their masks and take their bows, there was a look of joy and contentment on their faces, as they saw the little kids, and the big kids looking after them, playing with the snow and the huge balls traveling down from the stage. This team of clowns had come to entertain, had conquered, and now were surveying the theatre that they had transformed into a virtual playground.
Slava’s SNOWSHOW opened at the Theatre Royal on Tuesday 11th June and is playing a limited season until Sunday June 23, 2013.