Davis Barber, Avery Shannon Lynch, Bethany Koulias and Carmella Jenkins (Photo by John Dlugolecki)
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Open Fist Theater Company at Atwater Village Theatre
Through August 1
RECOMMENDED
Hank Jacobs and Ensemble (Photo by John Dlugolecki)
As satire, The Great Clown Bank Show won’t win awards for novelty or wit, but its politics are spot on, and the show is presented with plenty of heart.
Written and directed by Hank Jacobs, this musical lends a nod to epic theater, with its inclination to breaking the fourth wall and its prompting of the audience to a critique of what goes down in the world at large (as opposed to any glimpse into the workings of the human psyche). There are multiple musical numbers (music by Mike Messer, lyrics by Jacobs), all part of a brash spotlighting of the excesses of capitalism. The spine of the story is the fortune of a family of clowns, appropriately surnamed Greedy given their propensity to desire, acquire, and abuse the fabulous wealth they amass for themselves.
The patriarch of this treacherous, backstabbing clan is Gus Greedy (Davis Barber) who determines he wants to be rich and, after rifling through possibilities, decides that his most advantageous option would be to open a bank, an institution whose workings maximize gain with minimal pain for its founder. After accumulating a small fortune, he falls for the sexy gold-digging Glenda (Clara York). They marry and breed twins Gary (Matthew Goodrich) and Glenn (Kevin M. Brennan); the latter, in turn, begets a couple of obnoxious spoiled clown kids (Tambrie Allsup and Torrin Kelly) with his mate Greta (Elle Engelman). She’s a hot number who, like Glenda, is only interested in money, and indifferent to which of the two brothers (who had competed for her hand) she would marry.
The family’s history is recounted by a ringmaster (Jacobs), who at frequent intervals reiterates how the ways and means of this clan’s acquisition of wealth — leveraged buyouts, outsourcing and so on — impact on everyone else. At one point, he himself assumes the role of a would-be grantee, pleading for help from the philanthropic entity founded by Gary, a celebrity womanizer. (The money is not forthcoming.)
The plot itself is rather skeletal, but it’s fleshed out with numerous riffs: one elaborate scene is a burlesque of a woman’s labor in childbirth (hard to laugh at, actually), including the babies’ passage down a watery birth canal; another, toward the end, features four femme clowns in provocative costumes (Benny Lee Harris Lumpkins, Jr.) imparting comeuppance to their male counterparts by leaving each of them gagged and bound to a chair.
And the story breaks in a couple of places entirely — once for a solo acrobatic performance by Avery Shannon Lynch, lithely maneuvering her torso around a large hoop, and a second time for guest performer Michal Rayner’s terrific comedy act which involves two parasols and a pirouetting hamburger.
The production’s liabilities include an uneven standard of dancing and singing, and a tendency for the instrumentals (to my ear, anyway) to overshadow the vocals. And unless you’ve lived life like a groundhog, there’s little in the messaging you don’t already know.
Still, in an era when just glancing at the news in the morning precipitates weeping and/or tearing one’s hair out, a dose of broad silliness remains a welcome diversion.
Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater. Fri., 9 pm, Sat., 7 pm, Thurs., July 30, 7 pm; thru Aug. 1. https://www.openfist.org Runtime: two hours with an intermission.
