Lloyd Brant and Rosie Cole have been partners in life and work for more than 25 years, keeping schtick and slapstick through fairs, festivals and stages all over. Brant worked with Kevin Kling to develop the new Theatre of Fools show, The Vaudevillian: Spirit of the American Dream, which fills the Southern Theater this weekend and next. 3-Minute Egg dropped in to watch the wordless action and speak with Brant and Cole about their artform.
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Went to this show really wanting to like it. And I did really enjoy the Medicine Show (whose music and antics literally carry the entire show) and the always amazing Arsene. Sadly Brant and Cole and the lame narrative made this painful to sit through. Even their cute bits (like Cole and her cowbells) are dragged on for too long and ultimately don’t deliver.
Arsene, on the other hand, is one of those “can’t take your eyes off him” performers. An evening of Medicine Show and Arsene would be worth the price of admission, but then there is Brant’s artistic sense that made him try to set vaudeville to a narrative. He was wrong in this basic premise and the entire show pays the price for his error. I sense that Brant thinks of himself as a Cirque de Soleil calibre clown, but he can’t pull it off. His juggling is shown up to be woefully inadequate (especially alongside Arsene’s crazy skills) and he fails to convey any real emotions with his limited bag of expressions and naive sense of humor.
One of the stranger elements of this strange show is Kevin Kling’s disembodied narration (pre-recorded to be sure). It sounds out of place at the beginning – like you’re hearing the audio from the next theater over – and it’s missing in action in other spots where the pantomime action could have used some narrative set-up. But in the second act, the narration devolves into a rant apparently intended to shame Joe Kennedy for the hastening the death of vaudeville – HUH? Apparently there’s nothing quite as entertaining as Kennedy bashing?
Brant’s best decisions were to include Arsene and the Medicine Show in this venture. But then he squanders their considerable talents. If he wants to save this show for the remainder of its run, he should lose (or substantially trim) the Kling narrative, delete the melodrama in its entirety, tighten the editing of his and Cole’s routines, and fill up all the vacated real estate with expanded Arsene and Medicine Show bits. Now THAT’S Entertainment!