Musical clowns.- 08/01/2002.

Théâtre L´Entresort.- Chalon en Champagne.- France.
Antoine Bréard/Coulisses.

Musical clowns A show of overlapping sketches in which the Los Excéntricos company combines an extremely wide range of styles. They offer us music, juggling and comedy. Los Excéntricos are an endangered species of clown. Technically impressive and hugely creative, rounded off with huge dollops of fun, they manage to squeeze the best out of traditional numbers. They have managed to add a touch of modernity to the old tricks, which great names from the past so often could not. Instead of getting trapped in too classical a register, they successfully mix technological innovation and loud high-jinks to the audience's delight. Marceline, Sylvestre and Zaza are three actors who pull out all the stops. This extraordinarily dynamic trio give their all on stage and know how to make the most of their resources as clowns, an often underrated genre. Música Maestro is a show by clowns; very, very good clowns. Celebration is natural here and, with great pleasure, we enter an absurd world where laughter is ever the priority. The situations are strange, incongruent, and all the characters immerse themselves in a special register in order to completely seduce the audience. While Zaza's humour is based on repetition, Silvestre's sharper humour is based on words –making both the audience and his fellow clowns laugh. Marceline opts for more subtle jokes, especially if any of her various outfits are involved. The strength of the acting makes the characters seem tender, poetic and even terrifying at times. Zaza's touches are always the most difficult to detect… However, the humour is not everything and the collage of numbers contains some beautiful artistic gems that make up for any hiccups in the proceedings. The fragments interpreted possess an exceptional quality and the musical saw version of Édith Piaf's Vie en Rose is riveting to say the least. The bits of cleverness used to rejuvenate some of the numbers are extraordinary and the audience has no choice but to gaze speechless at the trio's flabbergasting techniques. Their years of touring around the world (Japan, Canada and Europe) has lent the show (and, by extension, the company) a comforting patina that appears not to have affected the cast over the passing of time. Although we are sad that our three little troublemakers are leaving us, we know that we will meet them again in some other place with other creations.
Antoine Bréard/Coulisses.