EIF - Clown Show ★★★★★

Rare is the exceptional show that can have you grinning and guffawing for an hour before bringing you to tears. Such is the profound experience that is Clown Show, the newest spectacle from the always unpredictable and impossible-to-categorize Geoff Sobelle.

Edinburgh International Festival’s theme this year is “All Rise,” and a major focus of its programming is the USA on the celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Sobelle was commissioned by the EIF to mark the occasion, and wowza, has he delivered.

Beginning with a clown cortège to honor a death, the mostly wordless Clown Show then opens its worn-out curtains to an incredible big-top set that earned a spontaneous round of audience applause. A grand piano sits center stage, turning slowly on a revolve, and as the piano clown — almost all the clowns play instruments during the show, and superbly — tickles the ivories, the piano falls apart leg by leg, sinking to the ground.

The message is immediately clear: Grand is going to be taken down to size. And sure enough, an upright piano is wheeled onstage to replace it. But even that eventually gets downsized.

As one hilarious skit or musical act follows another, the play’s distinct Americanness creeps to the fore. Excerpts of beloved national songs get played, often in minor keys. A cowboy act devolves into bullet-flying chaos when a gunslinger armed with a banana goes on a shooting spree, ending with a bald eagle crashing to the ground.

Splat. But the show goes on.

Rome had its bread and circuses to distract the masses from its internal problems; America has circuses and popcorn, the latter of which is tossed into the audience with abandon while a song with only one word — “Popcorn!” — gets cheerfully repeated. The beloved snack is brought back as a hopeful distraction when things in the big top start to go awry, and even at the worst of times, when the circus is self-imploding, a popcorn stand is wheeled around the stage, circling the madness.

The marvelous cast — Sophie Bortolussi, Nikki Calonge, Mike Dobson, Domenica Fossati, Leo Gurevich, Gideon Irving, Jenn Kidwell, Elvis Perkins, and Sobelle — makes all the chaos look effortless as they valiantly struggle to keep the circus afloat, but when it becomes clear that utter disaster is all but inevitable, the laughs stop and heartbreak kicks in. Near the show’s end, the clowns insist that the audience join them in singing “The Best is Yet to Come.”

But it isn’t.