Posted on: Friday, October 22, 2004
STAGE REVIEW
'AGA-BOOM' brings out the child in us all
By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic
Leave it to a clown to awaken and nurture a sense of play. Children play instinctively. Most adults have lost their playfulness or have had it sucked out of them by the seriousness of growing up.
Photo courtesy of AGA-BOOM The brains behind the show is Dimitri Bogatirev, who developed it as a spin off from a successful clown act with the Cirque du Soleil. The resulting theatrical clowning is a blend of pantomime and physical comedy that uses simple props and boundless imagination to involve both youngsters and oldsters alike.
Iryna Ivanytska, Bogatirev's wife and partner, opens and sets the tone for the production. In a baggy yellow outfit with a matching explosion of hair, she demonstrates with tantalizing physicality the lure of a simple button and a sign that reads "Do Not Touch."
To the mind of a clown, this is an overwhelming temptation to break the rules. An explosion results and Ivanytska fairly writhes with guilt under the unflinching eye of Philip Briggs as a security guard type.
A crumpled paper curtain forms the backdrop to the action. The clowns eventually punch through it, creating openings for strange appearances and metamorphoses.
• Mamiya Theatre, Saint Louis School • 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, through Oct. 30, 2 p.m. Saturdays, and 1 and 4 p.m. Oct. 31 • $28 general, $18 children, seniors and students for weeknight performances; $38 general, $28 children, seniors and students for weekend performances, including matinees • 545-2820 By this time, the adults in the audience are sufficiently warmed up to participate as silent guinea pigs in the pantomime. A man is coaxed up to the stage and handed a mop head to rock and bottle-feed as if it were an infant. Another couple are invited to participate in a mock battle, complete with charges on horseback, a prolonged and melodramatic death scene, and a wailing mother.
In a break from the comedy, Tatiana Gousarova performs a curious semi-contortionist routine in black leotard and hood, with a white expressionless mask attached to the back side of her head.
Although we spot the reversal immediately, the routine develops a compelling attraction as we work to untangle its compromised reality.
The capstone of the show is a long piece of audience involvement with trash.
The cast fills the stage with a layer of crumpled paper dumped from garbage bags, then cranks up a leaf blower to send paper scraps and confetti flying into the audience. This, of course, prompts the audience to wad up the paper and fling it back at the stage.
Something like a snowball fight ensues, escalating to ever larger objects — helium-filled plastic bags — that bounce into the audience and engage everyone in a playful free-for-all in a finale that continues as long as the audience has energy for it.
Ultimately, we are pulled into the abandonment of the moment, and the theater becomes a playground where the only point is to have fun.
"AGA-BOOM" gives us all a time out from the adult world and makes it OK to play for a while — for about 80 minutes without intermission in the production now at the Mamiya Theatre.
Dimitri Bogatirev, left, and Iryna Ivanytska, a husband-wife clown team, are bringing "AGA-BOOM" to the Saint Louis School's Mamiya Theatre.
Bogatirev makes his big entrance juggling and spinning a suitcase, and generally making it appear to be lighter than air. Later, he unrolls and spins rolls of toilet paper in a variation of the Chinese ribbon dance and spins a small plane — Hula-Hoop style — on an invisible wire attached to his topknot.
'AGA-BOOM'
