Slava's Snowshow

Sometimes in the theatre, albeit all too rarely, magic can happen. Sometimes, when each and every theatrical element combines, the result is a perfect, fleeting moment of pure theatrical ecstasy. We recognise it instinctively – compelled to make sense of such welcome, but unusual, wonder. But never in my theatre-going experience, has magic happened as purely and simply (or as often) as it does within every riveting moment of Slava's Snowshow.

From the raw and beautiful aesthetics of every aspect of the production's design to the eye-scorching, demonic snowstorm, this is a performance unlike anything I have ever experienced. Hatched by bravura sound, lighting and staging brilliance, this is theatre that reaches out, both literally and metaphorically, and turns your expectations of what theatre can achieve upside down and inside out.

Polunin's rock-solid, picaresque narrative provides his performers with a framework for every possibility – from the heart-aching poignancy of a track-side farewell, to rollicking adventures on the high seas … astonishing creative genius is constantly illuminated. While Slava's Snowshow might be renowned for its spectacle, it is the myriad of tiny heartbeats of pure Clowning artistry that ultimately inspire it. It is one delicate, white snowflake – lifted, gently, from the end of a broom – that signals the impending doom. It is the raising of an eyebrow, the flickering of an eye, the pouting of a mouth, the tightening grip of a broomstick and the casting of one expression after another that power this performance to its awe-inspiring conclusion: where everything that was once nuance balanced with illusion, is revealed in all its over-sized, audience-uniting, glorious wonder.

Slava's Snowshow is a journey of humanity, and all its flaws and possibilities, in finite, wordless detail. Magic happens. Don't miss it.

Geoffrey Williams