Glob review: Mindful, comforting clowning
The intricate circus two-hander creates a space of snow-covered serenity
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Clowning is surely one of the undersung marvels of the circus world. It’s easy to gawp in awe at human towers and balletic aerials, but clowns still carry around the residue of being perceived as filler, the light relief between shows. Acts such as Les Foutoukours remind you just how intricate, demanding, precise and tender the art of clowning can be. This Quebec duo feel like descendants of Slava, the Russian clown whose elegant 1990s Snowshow became an international hit. While Glob is smaller and gentler than Snowshow, its wintery warm heart, tactile costumes and soft, wordless slapstick cocoon you in a similar world.
The stage is festooned with frosty branches and glowing moon-like orbs. Through two puffs of smoke emerge Rémi Jacques and Jean-Félix Bélanger, in larger-than-life white feathery suits. They could have stepped straight out of a stop-motion animation, so detailed and strange are their movements, their rippling caterpillar feet and angled backs. They draw humour from small social interactions; a rejected handshake, a misfired hug. How strange we humans are in our rituals, they seem to say.
But there is also a childlike awe and mischief to their antics that any parents will recognise. They take delight in a freshly discovered piano, and sabotage each other’s tap dancing. Glob is a slow burner, but with its sweetly flawed characters and graceful beauty it offers an escape from the real world into a comfortingly, clownishly surreal one instead.
Glob, Underbelly Bristo Square, until 30 August, 3pm; picture: JF Savaria.