‘Slava’s Snowshow’: Brilliant Clowns Provide the Messiest Fun You Can Have on Broadway

The interval is when things go really crazy. It’s not just that the clowns in Slava’s Snowshow start clambering over the audience in the stalls of Broadway’s Stephen Sondheim Theatre (to Jan. 5, 2020), but they start drenching everyone with water spinning in airborne cartwheels from their umbrellas. They sit on laps, can’t work out which way they want to go, drape themselves everywhere, get stuck, and then scraps of paper start being thown. Merry chaos.

So if you’re getting a seat at Slava’s Snowshow go for the front to middle of the stalls, for the full messy glory of it. Oddly, this bananas slapstick isn’t the distinguishing feature of the show, it is the clowning itself. Led by the show’s creator, Slava Polunin, who enters the stage pulling something on a rope, these clowns look and act sad, then menacing, then happy, then sad again. The audience revels in it all, and their mischief.