Simply put, see this show. I cannot state it anymore plainly.
Live music, acrobatics, and hilarity. Grit, death, and intrigue. “Under the Big Top: The Circus Plays” embodies everything that’s right with theater in Downtown’s intimate venue The Box Performance Space. Blackout is its resident theater company along with Cardboard Playhouse, which performs mainly children’s plays. “Under the Big Top: The Circus Plays” marks its third year in production, and with all of its gusto and originality, hopefully three years is just the beginning.
“The Circus Plays” is composed of two original works by two different members of the Blackout’s artistic core. Both plays take place at the circus and involve fathers looking for lost daughters.
Upon entering the theater, you’ll be greeted by stilt walkers and receive a wristband along with your tickets. You’ll know you’re in for something special. The inside of The Box, decked out like the Big Top itself, is packed with games and face painting and prizes for the skilled or lucky.
Depression-era music plays over the loudspeakers as you step into this time machine to lost vaudeville acts and theatrical wonders. Go early.
The set is itself largely simple (though the stretch of games in the midway is anything but) with hay barrels, miscellaneous furniture, and tin troughs. But the most impressive piece, by far, is the hula-hoop-sized ring suspended from the ceiling that can adjust itself up and down when need be. It is on this ring that the play begins.
The first act, “Long Ways to Travel” by Heather Yeo, is pure grit and noir, weaving police interrogations with monologue. It begins with a speechless ring act performed by Julie Nagle. It starts the piece off well, with a sense of uncertainty of what you’re watching, and when the Cohen brothers’ style and tone begins, you’re pulled in immediately.
Needless to say, it is dark and unsettling, with the dialogue snappy and engrossing, and Shangreaux Lagrave’s lead performance as Jove is effortless.
A scene like a police interrogation is a bit too visually simple for stage, so there are times when the Sheriff (William Johnson) or Jove will circle the table occasionally and move to counter one another to face the opposite side of the audience. It was subtle and effective.
Best of all were the lightning transitions from the Sheriff grilling Jove to his more soft talk with the star of the circus, Betty (Julie Nagle).
With Jove at his table and Betty at her ring, the Sheriff provided the important link between the two simultaneously enacted dialogues, allowing for Yeo to control exactly the pace you receive information. It additionally broke up the long spaces of uninterrupted dialogue and built suspense, allowing for the both characters’ personal stories and the entire play to develop in two different ways quickly. The writing and its excecution are solid and satisfying right up to the end.
Lenard Madrid’s performance as vile and domineering Ringmaster is noteworthy in an entire set of noteworthy performances. He is a live action Snidely Whiplash with both slime and realism, and, when the other characters fear him, so do you.
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Intermission did not prepare me for what was to come for the second act.
Barney Lopez writes “Petite Poems of Peas” and it begins with “Story Time.” A gypsy woman tells the epic, whimsical tragedy of a circus family’s love and loss, leaving Ted the Clown, (Shannon Flynn) all alone as the story ends and the play begins.
This was a mystical dream circus I was witnessing now, yet it was no less enthralling than the nail-biting realism before it.
The opening is so complete and flawless that you’d think the play could just stop there. But it doesn’t because Lopez has much more to give and simply because you have not laughed hard enough yet.
Flynn’s quintessential Sad Clown is downright side-splittingly funny. I thought it was one of the funniest things I had ever seen on stage.
That is, until the elephants.
Who designed these badass things? Blackout’s mission statement says they create “productions as an ensemble … to do everything.” So it could very well be all of them.
They are worth the price of admission alone.
And although you could argue that Flynn has the dramatic lead, he spends relatively little time onstage (for plot reasons), so the main comedic responsibilities fall to the lost and talented mime girl, Little Pink, (J. Nicole Duke) and the stilt walkers, Buddy (Christopher Walsh) and Guy (Christopher Gillooly).
The stilt walkers are funny simply on the basis that they are on stilts. And it’s true that they are two delightful dumbass friends, and their comedic chemistry together is undeniable. Even from a simple visual standpoint, the stilts are effective tools for diversity and interest for the play at large.
“Petite Poems of Peas’” use of the ring is extensive and its humor and emotional ranges of such a short piece are incredible.
The ensemble works to make you care. And you do.
*“Under the Big Top: Circus Plays”
Friday-Sunday
FThe Box Performance Space
114 Gold Ave SW
July 16-25
Friday and Saturday at 8p.m.
Sunday at 2p.m.
$12 General Admission
$8 Students*
