Review: Slava's Snowshow

Audience Participation Gone Amok

Clowns with floppy hats and feet, an ocean of fog, a giant spider web, huge bouncing balls and an indoor snowstorm are a few of the elements that combine to entertain in Slava's Snowshow at the Helen Hayes Theatre. When audience members suddenly get wet, have clowns walk over them and their seats, get stuck in web (actually very sticky)and get clobbered by kids trying to hit balls, however, fun turns to annoyance in interaction gone amok (at least one guy left in disgust during the show I attended).

Created by Russian clown Slava Polunin, who shares lead clown Yellow's role with Robert Saralp and Derek Scott, Slava's Snowshow is performed to recorded music in front of designer Victor Plotknov's worn-looking, blue-quilted, star dotted set with numerous special effects including fog, bubbles, umbrellas that rain on the audience, confetti and flashing lights.


There's kid giggle-inducing stuff in the routines: a shark fin chases the clowns through fog; a clown talks in squeeky nonsensical gibberish on very large plush phones. Unlike the far superior Wintuk from Cirque de Soleil, however, there's not much story for the kids to follow and what happens on stage really isn't all that exciting. Slava has some fun in it, to be sure, but it feels more like a kid's birthday party stretched on too long instead of a Broadway show.

A 30-minute intermission, during which children run up and down the aisles throwing snow (paper from a previous run of the snow machine) is about as long as either of the show's two acts. The concluding snowstorm involves a lot of pieces of paper blown out on to the audience while a blinding light keeps you from being able to see much of anything. Then, in a last effort to create pandamonium, large balls are sent out into the audience. Folks hit them to keep them afloat for an unbelievably long time, all while kids are running around trying to get them and striking audience members in the head when they miss. It's audience participation against your will and gone amok.