Tweedy is a clowning legend, having performed with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey’s, and most famously with traditional ‘village green’ circus, Giffords for over 15 years, he’s honed his craft in front of a generation of audiences. Now he’s breaking out with his own Tweedy’s Massive Circus (don’t say that it’s tiny; it just shrunk in the rain). Ably accompanied by Sam Goodburn of Fringe sensation, Sophie’s Surprise 29th, actor and musician Reuben Greeph, and actor and aerialist Loren O’Dair, Tweedy oversees an hour of insanity as he attempts to create an amazing show against a great deal of hilarious incompetence.
A near-perfect clown show. This level of chaos takes practice!
From the very beginning, with Tweedy arriving in a tiny car and crashing into everyone, the show is carnage. Sandbags drop from above, cast get tangled in cables, props and set fall apart, and there’s a lot of shouting, recriminations, and slapstick. The children in the audience scream with laughter and the adults aren’t far behind. The main body of the performance is Tweedy’s constant attempts to convince O’Dair’s wealthy financier that he can produce the quality of show he’s been promised her yet every attempt ostensibly fails but still results in some excellent clowning.
This is the perfect family show, Tweedy and the rest of the cast have crafted a script that allows for many asides and adlibs, breaking of character and the inevitable corpsing – everyone is having a good time, but you get the impression that the cast are having even more fun. The humour is pitched with a laser focus on the scatological, violent, anarchic sense of humour of small children but there’s a lot of clever gags in there for the grown-ups. Tweedy understands that the only reason we watch a plate spinning routine is to see things smash, and that if a clown climbs a ladder, he better fall from it.
Throw in a dinosaur performing on aerial silks and you’ve got a near-perfect clown show. This level of chaos takes practice!
