PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Bristol Old Vic (Thur 1 Dec-Sat 7 Jan)

FAMILY THEATRE Any self-respecting Xmas family show has to convincingly answer two questions. 1) Are the little’uns bewitched and rapt, or bored and restless? And 2) just behind them in the second row, are the grown-ups smirking knowingly, or tapping distractedly on their mobiles?

Happily 'Good Clown Bad Clown', BOV Studio’s homegrown Xmas show developed by Renata Allen and John Retallack, ticks both boxes. There’s a nice contrast between Hiphop, the good clown (a sweet-natured, pratfalling Chris Farish) and his evil nemesis Zimzam (a superb, sneering tour de force from Ian Summers), with Alison Fitzjohn’s Dolly Dimple a bumptious comic presence in between.

Allen’s story draws upon an American folk tale about two landowners – one kind to his workers, the other cruel – and adapts it seamlessly into the tale of two clowns-cum-circus impresarios with radically different approaches to funny business. Hiphop runs his circus on kindness and a refusal to take himself too seriously; the snarling, selfish and irritable Zimzam, meanwhile, is from the treat-‘em-mean, keep-‘em-keen school of business management. When the two circuses arrive in town on the same night, Zimzam hatches a plan – aided by Fitzjohn’s excellent Devil and her two diabolical puppet henchmen – to swallow up Hiphop’s circus into his own. The ensuing comic mishaps feature a dank and deserted cottage, a comely princess in a high tower, and a village driven by thirst to civil strife – before, convincingly, Good has its day.

Through it all, the contrast between the two clowns’ style of comedy – Farish’s Hiphop earns laughs with his open haplessness, Summer’s Zimzam by making others look stupid – gives the piece a nice rhythm. The kids love the antics of all three actors, who deliver masses of comic energy, and you will too. The narrative, with its wild open spaces and dark cottages, has something of the folky, elemental feel of an Aesop’s Fable or the original Pinocchio: and Liesel Corp's simple set design, evocative rather than detailed, keeps things atmospheric yet mobile.

While this show doesn’t quite have the magic of last Xmas’s BOV Studio show, Champloo/Travelling Light’s irresistible ‘Boing’, it’s still a beguiling family treat, with just the right mix of slapstick, knowing laughter and even manageable darkness to keep all ages happy. (Steve Wright)

Copyright Steve Wright 2011

Pic: Paul Blakemore