CheekyChicago

Let’s begin by acknowledging the elephant in the room: we’re reviewing 500 Clown and the Elephant Deal in the last week of its run and, as of this post, you have four more chances to see it. If you read no further, you should know this fact and go find tickets now.

Chicago-based troupe 500 Clown returns to Steppenwolf for the third time with its acrobatic, comedic and meta style of theater. The general conceit in their plays is that they’re clowns putting on a well-known show, things don’t go as planned and mayhem ensues. With stage combat, daring feats and comedic bits, the performances reveal some facet of the source material. 500 Clown Macbeth sees the clowns ruined by their own ambition as they compete for the Scottish Play’s title role. 500 Clown Frankenstein heightens the monster’s suffering as an unruly lab table takes over the show. With all their fourth-wall breaking, it seems perfect that 500 Clown would tackle the meta-theatrical Bertolt Brecht, and this they do in 500 Clown and the Elephant Deal.

As director Leslie Buxbaum Danzig notes in the program, Brecht wanted his audiences to see that theater, like life itself, is just a creation. He wrote and directed plays to be fun and physical, more like a live spectator sport than a sober piece of “art.” With this notion in mind, 500 Clown has used a surreal interlude involving elephants in Brecht’s Man Is Man as the inspiration for a play that isn’t a play at all. It’s a cabaret act featuring the music of John Fournier. Or it would be, if not for those clowns.

Cabaret diva Madame Barker, played by the gutsy Molly Brennan, demands the spotlight – literally. So the red-eared, black-clad clowns must climb furiously around the set’s scaffolding to operate the ropes and pulleys that control Barker’s follow spot, which dangles above the audience and looks like it was made of old tin cans.

Tech designer Jim Moore’s brilliant structure gives the clowns plenty to work with. As Fournier and the band play on stage, a series of mishaps force the actors into death-defying stunts to keep the cabaret show going. The clowns fight, kill and even compete for the right to join the audience rather than suffer the onstage abuse. Think Hedwig and The Angry Inch meets The Three Stooges – only totally different and everyone’s an acrobat.

Whenever Madame Barker is indisposed, or changing into fabulous costumes in a mostly visible section of the stage, clowns must cover for her. This allows Bruce (Adrian Danzig), Shank (Paul Kalina), Cheetah (Matt Hawkins) and Viola (Jessica Hudson) to shine with musical numbers of their own and comedic bits aplenty.

It takes a while for the play to unfold – or one should say, to reveal that it’s not a play. For the first few numbers I found myself waiting for the story, or that “elephant deal” they mention, or whatever Brecht intended. But the fun comes when you realize that conventional plot is never gonna happen. We’re all just sitting in a room, enjoying great music, watching hilarious clowns go through hell to make theater. Brecht would certainly approve.