Stage Review
'Clown' gets frown for excess of action
By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic
Where: University of Hawai'i, Ernst Lab Theatre When: 7:30 pm today and Saturday; 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday Tickets: $9 ($7 seniors, military, faculty, staff and students; $3 UH-Manoa students) Information: 956-7655
There's an interesting premise behind "The Clown of God," but while this children's show at the University of Hawai'i is filled with movement and action, it ultimately suffers from overload.
'The Clown of God'
Mark Branner directs the performance and has adapted the script from a children's book, a French story, and an opera by Massenet. He also throws in liberal helpings of Italian commedia dell'arte and circus flavor.
The story focuses on a poor boy with a flair for juggling that brings him worldly success, but misplaced pride, leading to his downfall. He eventually is redeemed as an old man when he offers his talent as a Christmas gift to the Christ child. The story's ultimate sentimentality comes across, but the message is nearly lost in the shouting and arm-waving that dominate the show.
Worse, we spend too much time trying to identify the central character.
Branner creates his own problem by triple-casting the central role. Nicole Tessier plays the juggler as a Boy in the early scenes, earning food by juggling vegetables at the farmers market and pleading to join a troupe of touring players.
Rebel Allen plays the juggler as an adult named Pedrolino, but defers to out-of-town talent Steve Patient, who appears in white-face as Piero, Pedrolino's stage persona, for the actual performance sequences. Much of the show has gone by before we figure out that all three actors are playing the same character and that he has more than one name.
The task is complicated by double-casting Allen as Arleccino, a masked comedian whose best comic bit is to literally tickle himself to death with a feather.
But the difficulties with multiple focus don't end there.
Kristy Miller narrates the show as a Ringmaster from a high platform cut into the side wall of the theater, making it difficult to impossible for much of the audience to see her. And to further guild the lily, Branner adds a small, back-lit puppet screen above the exit door, where shadow puppets enact transitional scenes.
It's a three-ring circus, indeed.
But amid the ballyhoo, there are some visual elements worth noting.
The show opens with a disembodied head sliding up and down, zipper-style, inside the crack in the front curtain. Later, there's a nice comic bit as the world's longest strand of spaghetti is pulled out one exit and in another. The final image is that of a living Christ child, seen through a stained-glass scrim.
But the performance simply boils over like an overfilled pot on a high flame, spoiling what undoubtedly are some fine ingredients.
