Nothing to be done and nothing to do. Fritz, Franz and Rudy sit and wait. Expectation! Hope! Boredom! Delight! Not to take things sitting down, they put their best feet forward to make the grade and avoid a kick in the pants. A hilarious exploration of relationships, slapstick and chairs as three men await their fate By the Seat of Their Pants. Read more …
By the Seat of Your Pants is a fast, visual, funny show in a clown style for family audiences. A co-production with Howden Park Centre, this show continues Plutôt la Vie’s signature flavour of European Theatre Clowning. These Clowns are three 'somebodies,' 'anybodies' attempting to understand and do their best in the face of the absurd. Plutôt la Vie subscribes to Dr Seuss’s philosophy; ‘We like nonsense. It wakes up the brain cells.’
For the older people in the audience, there are fewer laugh-out-loud moments, but the 70-minute piece (which feels on the long side for such deliberately slight material) sustains itself on innocence and charm.
A real treat of gentle comedy that works for all primary school-aged children, but is best for seven-year-olds and up.
In a world where children have so many distractions at their fingertips it’s difficult not to see companies like Plutôt La Vie as anachronistic but judging from the reaction they got at Howden Park – the first performance on a long tour – there’s clearly still a place for live clowning in the hearts of kids – and big kids as well.
t's hard to say why all of this works so well, but there's something about the chemistry among the three performers – two clowns, one actor – and their director, Magdalena Schamberger, that seems to have unleashed a torrent of creativity, and a profound playfulness about the physical humiliations of life that has the little boys in the audience, in particular, convulsed with mirth.
On Tour, from Friday March 4, 2011, until Saturday April 16, 2011.