Slava's Snow Show returned to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts on July 31, 2013.
A cross between Cirque du Soleil and Blue Man Group, this entertainment phenomenon takes audiences on an alluring 90-minute journey that is “pure magic…an evening of enchantment and fun!” (The Express) The breathtaking show created by Slava, the original Cirque du Soleil’s clown genius, is an awesome theatrical experience and a profoundly moving spectacle full of vibrant wondrous images, delightful comedy, enchanting music and snow — lots and lots of snow.
Bill Hirschman pulled out his notes from five years ago to write his piece for Florida Theater On Stage:
Armed with smoke, spotlights, soap bubbles, plastic bubbles, confetti, wind machines, wacky costumes, a very loud and eclectic score (Claire de Lune to The Peter Gunn Theme), and a cast whose bodies bobble like cartoon characters, this all-too-brief production will delight entire families including young teens determined not to like anything.
Between the boundless imagination of these artists and their ingenuity in involving the entire audience directly inside the proceedings (we just can’t give you any spoilers), this is a thoroughly satisfying half-evening’s entertainment.
Mia Leonin wrote for The Miami Herald:
The real wonder is how it can rivet an audience like the one that filled the center’s Ziff Ballet Opera House Thursday night with the simplest human moments — a clown’s expressively waggling eyebrows or an ancient comic bit in which one person silently stalks another. Even in an era (and a show) of overwhelming multimedia, the human factor reigns supreme.
The show surrounds classic clown and mime set pieces — no less effective for being decades or even centuries old — with surreally beautiful, sometimes ominous, stage effects. Showers of paper snow fill the stage and the theater. Dreamlike moments — a glowing orange globe on a dark stage; a long-nosed, birdlike figure swinging through the air; towering, stage-framing blue panels rotating to turn it into a pillowy white and muffled world — are often followed by blasts of sound and light, wonder suddenly overwhelmed by dread.
The performers bring the show physically into the audience several times. To describe how would spoil the surprise that helps make these moments effective, even breathtaking. But the wild moments that end Snowshow had Thursday’s audience, from children to adults, playing and shrieking with delight.
Slava's Snow Show plays at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts through August 25, 2013.
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