Theatre

The set up doesn’t bode well. The diminutive, crumpled and kindly form of Boris Petrushansky is waiting patiently for an interview. We’re in the Théâtre du Rond-Ponte in Paris, where Petrushansky’s ‘Semianyki’ (‘The Family’) has been playing to packed houses and standing ovations all month, prior to a whistle-stop run at the Hackney Empire next week. ‘The Family’ is the latest export from Russia’s first, only and, by reputation as well as default, foremost clowning school: Theatre Licedei.
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But between us and a list of innocuous questions, lie not one but two translators. One speaks Russian and French. The other, French and English. True to Licedei’s historic form, however, what starts off a handicap ends up a glorious triumph of the clowning philosophy. ‘A classically trained actor I don’t want,’ says Petrushansky, (in reply to a question about when he joined the company, but never mind). ‘An actor will imitate a clown. But you cannot imitate a clown. A clown is a spirit within. Not a red nose or a wig or big shoes.’

None of these trademark clowning accessories makes an appearance in ‘The Family’. Instead, with whitened faces and Tim Burton-esque spiky hair, each member of the Nyki clan grabs a caricature and runs with it, off the stage and into an ecstatic audience. Marshalling her errant progeny with the stamp of a clog, the ice in her eye and the looming threat of her maternal embraces, is Mother. Olga Eliseeva’s heavily pregnant matron is ever on the verge of delivery, just as Alexander Gusarov’s drink-addled Father constantly threatens to abandon his ramshackle, dilapidated household.

Between these twin poles, Baby, the Sisters and the Brother bicker and brawl their way across the set in a series of mad-cap, meaningless, perfectly choreographed capers.

Tolstoy opened ‘Anna Karenina’ with the observation that ‘happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ The Nykis manage to thoroughly enchant their audiences by proving both aphorisms true. They revel in their anarchic, archetypal happiness, heavily influenced by the likes of Chaplin and Buster Keaton, but beneath all the blinking, wordless tomfoolery creeps a bruising, idiosyncratic sadness. That the family is held together by the loosest of financial and emotional threads is always in evidence.

Petrushansky explains that this was a by-product of the show’s genesis, and not its intent. ‘We wanted to think about family’ he says, ‘so we began playing with our own experiences, and this show is what happened. It’s just life. It is not a comment on life. It is life. This is how Licedei works.’

Founded in St Petersburg (then Leningrad) in 1968 by Slava Polunin, Theatre Licedei set out to unite the world’s fools in a heavily divided Europe. And, although they aroused the suspicion of the Russian authorities, Polunin’s vast popularity meant that he was permitted to bring foreign clowns to Moscow, and to travel outside the USSR in the 1980s.

The company ceremoniously laid itself to rest in 1988, in a mock funeral procession through the streets of St Petersburg. After the fall of the Berlin wall, most of the founding members, including Polunin himself with his world-famous ‘Snowshow’, disbanded to forge careers in the more lucrative West. Those who remained founded a clowning school in St Petersburg, where the ‘poetic clowning’ of latter-day Licedei shows was forged.

Petrushansky joined the company nine years ago, at Polunin’s behest, but he is loathe to comment on the changing fortunes of Russia’s clowns, or to talk about the social or political implications of ‘The Family’. ‘This is not a show about the social classes. It is not about life’s difficulties.’ He shrugs his shoulders in his outsized, rumpled blue jacket. ‘It changes wherever we go.’ ‘The Family’ opened in St Petersburg six years ago and, after a Russian tour, sold out at the Avignon Festival in France in 2005, and the Edinburgh Festival in 2006. ‘Each time we play, the audience is different. Money, no money; some suffering, some happiness. As the audience changes, so the show will change; the heartbeat between the audience and the clown is the same.’

Every conversational avenue ends in these beautifully zen-like cul-de-sacs. Is there something quintessentially Russian about ‘The Family’? ‘The love.’ Petrushansky answers, as though this were a perfectly sensible reply.

Any hope that the younger members of the company might elucidate matters is dashed in minutes. The 28-year-old Kasyan Ryvkin, who plays the Brother, coolly and mischeviously opines that: ‘A clown is one who wants to know: what is a clown?’ But as he soothingly concludes, ‘No need to worry. Stay in peace, London. We are coming.’

In interview, as on stage, wisdom and warmth are to be had from the company, in abundance. Logic, however, will ever remain an anathema to a Licedei clown.

‘The Family’ plays at Hackney Empire.