Review Centre: Clowns

"This isn’t the most sophisticated show on the Fringe and, strictly speaking, it is really a show for kids. But it is, without question the most enjoyable and almost impossible not to love unless misanthrope is your middle name. It starts behind a massive paper backdrop, as four clowns loom in silhouette. Soon they appear on stage and engage in a bit of conventional banter and knockabout comedy, with one of them - long hair, doleful face - clearly the stooge for the other’s mischief. At one stage, one of the clowns tries to read a map, borrows a pair of glasses from a member of the audience, gives them back to the wrong person, and, in turn, gives their glasses to someone else and suddenly a good 16 people are trying to retrieve their glasses from complete strangers. Our mischievous hosts meanwhile have moved on with the show. You can scoff all you like at fancy notions of breaking down boundaries between audience and performers, but when it works, there’s truly nothing better, and there is no greater proof for that than Mimirichi. By the time the clowns have ripped the set into vast armfuls of shredded paper and advanced towards the audience, it is clear what is to come and the audience is ready for what must be the biggest paper fight ever to have graced an auditorium. Later they will cower behind a paper goalpost as one clown arranges an impromptu penalty shoot-out complete with massive paper football and a goalie plucked from the front row. At heart, Mimirichi celebrate the human capacity for playing - the clowns engage in several slapstick vignettes that celebrate the transformative powers of paper (they use it to create horses, monsters, an Arabian belly dancer). One of them, meanwhile, develops a despotic appetite, and, dressed as a king, clambers through the audience throwing articles of clothing into his belly. Beneath the fun and games there is something profound - and profoundly moving - going on, crystalised in the tremendous finale. Quite simply, the show’s big heart puts you in touch not just with your own humanity, but with that of your fellow man."

Rating: 9 / 10 Share this review:

"Very sweet and patient with these crazy demanding kids. The kids had a great time.."

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"I had Adam for my son’s 9th birthday party Not only the kids but the adults enjoyed it too. Adam was really funny with his magic and the kids enjoyed playing the games. He kept both the kids and the adults entertained. Would recommend.""

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"We hired Mooncalf without knowing for sure what to expect. The front page image is what made us assume he'd be pretty good. He was better than pretty good! "

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"I booked a party for my 3 year olds birthday with Susan.She was amazing not only did she keep kids laughing she made some of the most awesome balloons I have ever seen!She also Gave them really neat tattoos.She made sure each kid was happy.I would highly recommend her!"

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"nominated for the CIRCUBA International Festival 2021 for having a unique musical number of its kind"

Reply by Tarekito Clown
Thank you, it is a pleasure to be nominated for such an illustrious festival, I hope it can be held since it was suspended due to covid19 conditions ... thank you.

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"Adam is very good with our children and families affected by Autism. Would recommend him for your event""

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"Serendipity is what you’re aiming for in Edinburgh: a happy discovery out of the blue. Yes, it sounds like a paradox, like “expect the unexpected”. But up here, you must not just expect it, but welcome it. So if you hear, for instance (in a genu-ine example from a few years ago), of a 15-minute musical about a stewardess called The Jolly Folly Of Polly The Scottish Trolley Dolly playing in a minor venue towards the bottom of the Royal Mile, well, it’s not much time or money, so you’ve nothing to lose by taking a punt on it. And if you’re staggering across the Royal Mile in the small hours and meet a crowd of drunken loud¬mouths, wait for a couple of minutes before writing them off: it could be comedian Arthur Smith’s legendary Alternative Walking Tour. This event, though, is now in semi-retirement following an incident in 2000 when the reeling mob was mistaken for a bunch of nocturnal anti-Ann Widdecombe protesters (no, honestly), which led to the arrest of comic Simon Munnery for assaulting a police offi¬cer . . . “assaulting” in the sense of getting in the way of the cop’s body- charge. (Munnery’s tried and acquittal were amusing, too, but took place outside Festival season.) The true Edinburgh expe-rience is being knocked side-ways by a show, trying to explain it to others and real-ising that there’s no way you can do so and still sound remotely compos mentis, such as the piece about 10 years ago which consisted of a Hungarian woman in a sealed Perspex tank, per¬forming a dance routine whose duration and moves were limited by the available air in the box. If I were to say that last week I was affected beyond words by a Polish theatre company singing the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh in the strange polyphonic harmonies of southern Albania, you’d no doubt wonder whether I’ve been getting enough sleep lately. Yet Chronicles: A Lamenta-tion by the Piesn Kozla com-pany is a remarkable piece admirable and impressive, though hardly shattering. And then, walking away from the venue a few min¬utes after it was over, I had to stop in my tracks: I was fighting back tears, for no reason I could identify. Somehow the piece had bypassed the conscious areas of my mind and tapped into the well of basic emotion. Harrowing stuff. But the main discovery of the month so far is altogether more joy-ous: a bunch of Ukrainian paper-tearing clowns: Around 1990, Italian “ori¬gami impressionist” Ennio Marchetto was the hit of the Fringe, performing a series of mime impersonations while wearing amazingly intricate costumes he had constructed out of card¬board. Marchetto returns this weekend for the first time in several years, but he may find his thunder already stolen by the Mim-I- Richi company and their show Paper World. Not that their show is as painstakingly designed . . . dean me, no. They sim¬ply tear loads of plain paper up and play with it. And I mean loads: possibly around an acre of the stuff per show. You walk into the theatre, see a huge paper backdrop and think, “Ah, that’ll be the climax of the show.” Not a bit of it: it’s already in shreds after half an hour, and the fun keeps coming. Mim-I-Richi’s discovery is a simple one: tear paper, crumple it up, and you can pretend it’s just about any-thing: a football, a baby, a maneating monster, what¬ever. It’s the same sort of aesthetic which has informed many of designer Julian Crouch’s projects in the UK with Improbable Theatre, but more endear¬ingly ramshackle. Also like Improbable, Mim-I-Richi relishes the spontaneous and unexpected; it’s that shared delight in the moment which is at the heart of the best clowning. The players go to great lengths to involve the audience in their show, and are happy to take ideas and run with them, even when the “idea” is an uncontroRa- ble little boy in the front row who won’t stop flinging balls of paper back at them. For this isn’t enforced audience participation of the “let’s pretend we’re having fun” kind. The four perform-ers manage to get hundreds of people in the Pod Deco’s main space all pratting about gleefully like kids in a playground; they create an atmosphere of free play that is intensely liberating, and make sure that every single person in the house is car¬ried along. All that without a single word of dialogue. People by the hundred are discovering Mim-I-Richi up here, but that doesn’t make the joy of serendipity any less when you find them yourself."

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review: