This is an unusual and very welcome opportunity to see some contemporary clowning rooted in classical principles that tap into the essence of innocent, fallible, gullible, always ‘in-the-moment’ human experience.

Wellingtonian Jenny McArthur, who trained at the NZ School of Dance and Circomedia circus school in Bristol, has been taught by Lecoq clown teacher Giovanni Fusetti. Sampo Kurppa is a Finnish performer trained at the Turku Circus School and the Lecoq physical theatre school in Paris.  

McArthur’s Echo, short for Echolalia (which actually means to repeat meaningless babble) is a simple red-nose clown (no face paint) who has obsessive tendencies and a door that won’t let her out. It seems she is supposed to be attending a job interview. Instead she repeats domestic routines in militaristic style and vocalises imperatives by which she has learned to live (e.g. “Always wash your hands before a meal”; “It’s your duty to be beautiful” – derived, I take it from programme, from Aunt Daisy’s Household Tips).

While the publicity material suggests she is exploring autism, I see her more as someone who uses the rules and expectations of her conditioning as means of avoiding the very life she has been trained to embrace. She is simultaneously friendly and abrupt to audience members; self-sufficient yet lonely.

I feel there is greater potential for poignancy in her piece. The publicity suggests her job interviews are “desperately wanted” and if this came through more, and her inability to get out the door caused more anguish before she distracted herself again, it would be more engaging. As it is her activities, albeit amusing, and her impressive dance routine (the music choices are excellent), play out more as a way of filling the day than as behaviour driven by fears and trepidations all of us can understand.

Kurppa eschews both red nose and verbal language, vocalising only snatches of emotion. Temptation finds him fighting his addiction to cigarettes, a packet of which keeps appearing with the regularity and inevitability of a cuckoo clock. He tries to preoccupy himself with a cup of milk but the jug has eyes and keeps freaking him out …

One of his clown motifs is to never remember how to do the simplest things, like pick up a cup, so he has to work it out all over again. And he is averse to licking a stamp for the letters he keeps writing, so finds moisture elsewhere on his person. His stress is nicely contrasted by the calming effects of nicorette gum … until the craving returns.

The finger dancing and string games he uses to distract himself from temptation are wondrous to observe, and these prove to be but the warm-up acts for an astonishing display of three-ball juggling. Three balls may not sound like much but the way he gets them rolling and gliding up, down and around by using himself as the surface they traverse, is truly magical. If, like me, you’ve felt you didn’t need to see another juggling act, think again: this one is something else!   

Both Echolalia and Temptation could be shorter, or their length could be more justified by eliciting stronger emotional engagement in what drives their dramatic structures. But I am only saying that because Jenny McArthur and Sampo Kurppa are both so good at clowning that, without a credited outside eye (apart from each other, I assume), I’m sure they’re up for such feedback.

It’s an opportunity not to be missed.
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