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They’re
Not Just Clowning Around
By
James Yeara
Typo
By Jamie Adkins; co-directed by Jamie Adkins, Gypsie
Snyder and Yves Dagenais
Cirque
& Company, New York State Theatre Institute, Nov. 5
Typo,
Jamie Adkins’ nouveau vaudevillian extravaganza, is 65 minutes
of pure physical joy, the type of rush that comes when master
entertainers let themselves soar. Done with a minimum of spoken
words before Guillaume Lord’s bare-bones set (a 14-foot wooden
ladder up left, old wooden boxes down left hiding the marvelous
Ann Marie Levasseur’s piano, a wooden table and typewriter
midstage center and, most significantly, up center, a wire-mesh
trash bin full of crumpled papers full of typos), Typo
is a whirlwind of fun. If you can imagine master clown Bill
Irwin’s classic The Regard of Flight meets Stomp!
on the set of Blue’s Clues, you can see the sounds
and feel the sights of Typo.
Incorporating music, mime, juggling, balancing, mask (I defy
anyone not to laugh when Adkins stuffs his mouth with multiple
ping-pong balls, pushing them ever further into his cheeks
until he resembles a chipmunk with a thyroid disorder), hat
tricks, tightrope (“funambulism,” the teacher’s guide points
out) and slack-wire dancing (“walking” is too pedestrian a
gerund to use in describing Adkin’s skill), Typo has
something for anyone. A squirming 7-year-old in the row behind
me whined loudly, “What’s going on mommy?” as the lights went
up on Adkins, perched like The Thinker on the chair
in front of his typewriter, ripping out a sheet of paper,
crumpling it, pitching it and missing the wire basket. But
by the time Adkins was juggling the crumpled paper, along
with ping-pong balls, then juggling the balls by blowing them
out of his mouth (some 20 feet into the air), the 7-year-old
knew what was going on: laughter. Adkins has a preternatural
balance and a gleeful smile that mirrors Irwin’s grin of good
cheer. As each lazzi (phsyical routine) plays out after Adkins
types, reads, then crumples the sheet, the laughter builds.
It was like listening to the rhythm of waves, waiting for
the routine to build, and build, and build, then curl and
crash with laughter.
Yet during these 65 minutes, in which the dynamic duo create
smiles and guffaws in the audience, they also captured a shy
Chaplin-esque glow between two would-be lovers, which sparkles
as they walk upstage into the setting sun by Typo’s
end. The mad displays of physical prowess are displaced by
a tenderness that is touching. Typo is a deft demonstration
of clowning, acrobatics, and comic mannerisms, more sleight
of body than just mere hand manipulations; but it also possesses
a longing ache to be something more, have something more,
be with someone more—this is the mark of great clowning. Typo
is a show that makes no mistakes about where its body and
its heart are heading; they are both going where the laughter
is, and where something more can be.
Typo
was a sight to see; but, more, it was a marvel for the feelings
it evoked, and that makes for a singular show that will hopefully
soon return. We need all the laughter, grace, intelligence,
and tenderness that we can get right now, and we need to remember
that ache to be something more than we are.
“It
was like listening to the rhythm of waves, waiting for the
routine to build, and build, and build, then curl and crash
with laughter.”
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