CLOWN WORK

Helda

Helda and
the phone call

REVIEW

‘Circus of Vices and Virtues: Physical Performance for a Polarized World’

EDITOR’S PICKS
By Jonathan Kalb, Hunter Online Theater Review
(see: www.hotreview.org)

Forget Cirque de Soleil. Forget UniverSoul Circus. All intelligent people craving a springtime dose of circus should head for Cirque Boom's wonderful new “vices and virtues” piece, playing at the converted bathhouse called the Brooklyn Lyceum in Park Slope until April 12. This show, directed by Ruth Juliet Wikler, is a unique fusion of real ideas and big-top spectacle, marrying trapeze, rope dancing, tumbling, stilt-walking and clowning with politically tinged satire in the spirit of the German Karl Valentin and the Russians Bim and Bom. The dead-on skit called “Pride,” performed by a fantastic young clown named Anna Zastrow, is alone worth the trip. Just GO.  

Additional comment: Anna Zastrow deserves an award for that performance as [Helda]. It was brilliant... “JAAAACK” has now become a frequent expression around our house.  

CIRCUS OF THE SCARS

Few laughs among Cirque Boom’s feats of vice & virtues. By Paulanne Simmons for The Brooklyn Papers—excerpt:

Inspired both by the work of the 16th-century Flemish artist Pieter Brueghel, who infused his paintings with allegorical, sometimes sinister meaning, and the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the societal tensions that have followed, Cirque Boom artistic director Ruth Juliet Wikler has used the world of clowns, aerial artists and acrobats for political satire and social commentary.  

The circus opens with “Charivari,” described in the program as “a riff on the pre- and post-show melees of traditional circus.” Here the sinister and sensuous contortions of the acrobats, and the shrill, pre-recorded music are ample warning to the audience that this will be a circus unlike any they’ve seen before.  

Two of the most successful segments are “Lust,” in which Melissa Riker has choreographed her own graceful performance on what Wikler calls an “aerial fabric loop,” and “Pride,” Zastrow’s hilarious portrayal of an aspiring corporate executive who turns from a timid clown into a virago with a whip.  

In between the acts, Sonia Werner, dressed in a three-piece suit and sporting a painted moustache, appears as “Dick.” Dick is wheeled onto the stage in a makeshift circus float made principally from a shopping cart, and spouts the babble of the worst kind of politician.  

The 10 performers in the Cirque Boom ensemble are talented circus artists, but they are scarcely allowed to display their skills. For the most part, the performers jump over and under each other, engage in stage combat and execute (admittedly impressive) gymnastic feats. But let’s face it, this show is billed as a circus, and the audience has a right to expect something more. Nevertheless, Wikler and her cast and crew deserve credit for their effort to unite spectacle with serious thought. “The Circus of Vices and Virtues” attempts to expose the core of human misbehavior—the characteristics that lead humans to harm one another as they pursue power, material goods or satisfaction of desire.

Unfortunately, the troupe stops there. How much more effective this circus might have been had Cirque Boom also turned its attention to how people can overcome base desires, and better themselves and the world. With the confidence that comes with age and experience they will realize that people can be touched without being consistently banged over the head, and that great art made in the midst of war, plagues and other calamities, may present tragedy but also offer hope.  

Anna Zastrow also performed as clown
Anna Banana, the balloon phallus clown lady
upstaging Bill Irwin in the
Lysistrata Project at BAM, March 3, 2003,
directed by Ellen McLaughlin.

Review: Excerpt from GO BROOKLYN:

“...Cirque Boom's crafty clown Anna Banana stole the show. Using a strategically placed balloon pump, Banana’s on-stage construction of the menfolk’s air-filled members netted roars from the audience.”  

Bric Studio’s “Ample Sample” offers a festive array of works on the outer boundaries of the expected:

Review: By Lori Ortiz, Offoffoff.com:

“In a hilarious performance, clown Anna Zastrow of Cirque Boom plays a bumbling ‘Associate Assistant’ who becomes a whip brandishing dominatrix when finally promoted. ”