Clouds of bubbles float into the theatre to bob among the audience. A full-blown blizzard envelopes the stage. And a team of sad, funny clowns in green overcoats and batwing hats arrives to bring anarchic joy and some winter magic to a broiling Australian summer.
This is Slava’s Snowshow – a classic of 20th-century visual theatre that has held audiences spellbound on Broadway, the West End, and anywhere you can think of. More than 7 million people have seen this production since its inception in 1993, and it’s making a welcome return to Australia for the first time in a decade in December 2022.
Slava’s Snowshow is the invention of Slava Polunin, a Russian-born, Paris-based clown of the old school, the custodian of an age-old tradition but praised for bringing clown-based theatrical spectacle into the modern era. Occupying a genre all of its own, Slava’s Snowshow is a spontaneous and magical experience noted for transporting adults into a childlike state of wonder.
If you’ve ever thought of the theatre as hard work or clowns as not for you, this show could be your game changer. You can bring your kids (if they’re not too little), but this is no tame family show – it’s something altogether more profound and sublime.