Clown Show, EIF theatre review: 'more deeply poetic than simple words can convey'

Clown Show | Jess Shurte

Clown Show ★★★★★

King’s Theatre until 30 August

It’s rare to hear an Edinburgh Festival audience applaud a set; but when the curtain rises on the beautiful, decaying big top that is the setting for Geoff Sobelle’s Clown Show, at the newly reopened King’s Theatre, they simply can’t resist.

Striped in red and white, glowing with fairy lights that flicker ever more unsteadily as the show progresses, the big top is still gorgeous. The bleacher-like benches on either side, though, are populated by puppet grotesques who seem in various stages of decay; and centre stage, staring out at the audience like an Addams family of 21st century circus, stand the clowns, Sobelle and eight other performers, each one an installation in itself, fanciful or bedraggled, whose very costume, make-up and headgear seems like a distress signal from a culture in decline.

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The clowns, it seems, have been left in charge of the circus after everyone else has left; and what follows is a series of scenes, numbers and songs in which they increasingly fail to do whatever the scene aspires to, from elaborate stilt-walking to staging a bar-room rodeo, playing a classical quintet, or leading a circus big parade, featuring an astounding life-sized puppet elephant.

We’re told, in a programme note, that the show - specially commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival - offers a portrait of United States in its 250th year, and addresses issues of political division, growing polarisation, and environmental breakdown; and all of that is certainly present, not least in a musical score that includes variations on the Star Spangled Banner and the Battle Hymn of the Republic, as well as a remarkable song about popcorn.

In truth, though, Sobelle’s show is both more outwardly chaotic and more deeply poetic than simple words can convey; a profound absurdist response to the agonies of our times that can be hilarious, devastating, or heartbreakingly beautiful - and a feat of imagination, making and shaping that will continue to yield up new thoughts and emotions, no matter how many times we watch its wonderful, wrecked pageant unfold. Joyce McMillan

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