When you open your program to The Flying Karamazov Brothers now playing at ACT Theatre, you think, “Wow! Their program notes are so insightful! Their nearly 40-year-long history is full of credits from television to film to some of the best regional theatres in the country! With a bio like this, their show is bound to be professional and polished!”
Um… not quite.
Don’t get me wrong. Among the players (co-founder Paul Magid, Mark Ettinger, Roderick Kimball, and Stephen Bent) there is a ton of talent, energy, and pure love of their craft of physical and variety-style theatre. But, given their venue was a well-respected, professional playhouse (with a $35 per ticket price tag), their performance, overall, falls short.
The show was a series of vignettes interspersed with live music and juggling. It all seemed to center around the brothers’ collecting what they called “Objects of Terror” such as a miniature cello, a frying pan and a plastic fish. The scenes ranged from monologues set to live music, to banging on cardboard boxes in the style of Taiko drumming, to their dressing up like women in ballerina skirts or short, pink shorts. At one point Magid split a Big Mac in half with a cleaver. Some of these bits worked; some of them didn’t. How is any of this related? I still don’t know. Valentine’s Day is mentioned briefly, so I think it was all about the terror of dating, but then again there was that Big Mac, so I can’t be sure…
Anyway, when the brothers do what they do best—ad lib with the audience, improv the comedy, and most of all, juggle—they are great. A couple of their more physical sets were wonderful, particularly those where they used their jugglers’ clubs and balls to play out a rhythm, kind of like in STOMP. But too soon these moments would be over and the sense that this was a show adrift—or just too quickly or poorly crafted—would creep in again. Even some of the light and sound cues were off, and I’ve yet to experience that type of misstep in any of the smaller, less glitzy but just as hard working theatres of the Seattle fringe scene. As I overheard one viewer say, “When this show is finished, it will be great.”
Again, perhaps I am a grinch. Perhaps chaos was the point and I just missed it. Most of the people in the audience seemed to like it well enough.
But, aside from the joyfulness and virtuosity of the juggling, I just didn’t get it.
The Flying Karamazov Brothers. By Paul Magid and the Flying Karamazov Brothers. Produced and directed by Paul Magid. ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., Seattle. February 2-12, 2012. Tickets and information at http://www.acttheatre.org/Tickets/OnStage/Karamazov or (206) 292-7676.