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Theater

  

Slava’s Snowshow

Posted 11/24/2019

Slava's Snowshow, reviewed  by Fern Siegel for travelersusanotebook.com

Slava Polunin, a Russian performance artist, has toured Slava’s Snowshow worldwide. And it’s back on Broadway, at the Stephen Sondheim, with an air of absurdity, married to a hypnotic sense of experiential theater that relentlessly breaks the fourth wall.

Slava and his talented ensemble also boast a Chaplinesque quality.

Garbed in wacky costumes, they focus on sensory overload. As they battle the elements, usually mounds of snow, and grapple with simple props — poles, spider webs, balloons, brooms — audiences delight in wordless humor.

Like a Beckett character, Slava looks sad and somewhat confused throughout the intimate show, wandering in a world of endless obstacles. Yet there is also playfulness and gentle humor. He creates a world of nonsensical pantomime that scores with younger theatergoers, who especially enjoy the blitz of white confetti that rains down on them. Or what Hunter Arnold, one of the “Slava” producers, calls “an explosion of happiness.”

The show is silly, funny and offbeat, ending on a wild, uproarious note. There is a kind of magic in its simplicity. One big caveat: You have to like clowns. —Fern Siegel