Slava's Snowshow * * * * *
at Birmingham Hippodrome
Reviewed by David Faers
Imagine those quirky little cartoons from East Germany and Czechoslovakia that used to pop up on daytime television in the decades before daytime TV.
Now mentally flick through the pages of the very best children's books - the kind that you used to read well after your parents told you it was time to shut your eyes and go to sleep.
Add a troupe of Russian clowns, a quirky selection of music, some fanatastic props and truly stunning stage effects and you begin to get a mind's eye view of Slava's Snowshow.
This internationally-acclaimed show wowed theatregoers at the Hippodrome last winter and it's a fairly safe bet that some of the packed audience at Tuesday's one-week comeback opening night were back for a second helping of this stage delight.
People like nine-year-old Fay Holland who, as she walked out of the Hippodrome last year chattering away with her eyes bright and huge smile across her face, implored her dad (yours truly) to fork out for another pair of tickets the next night.
"Pleeeease can we go again? I don't care if I don't have any pocket money for six months but we've got to go again."
Praise really doesn't get any better than that - and young Fay finally got her wish. Little has changed in the intervening year but that doesn't matter a jot because this is 90 minutes or so of sheer perfection from the subtle word-free antics of the red and yellow character's onstage arrival to the other-wordly sequence where the clowns sprout wings and glide their lantern-lit way through clouds of smoke, to the mind and hair-blowing second-half climax of the arc-lit snowstorm.
The only criticisms of this cleverly conceived and executed work of art are that you can only see it once for the first time and that someone upstairs didn't arrange for a real snowfall outside at home-going time.
If I tell you that Snowshow is this reviewer's only five-star write-up in 2007 and that this is now the benchmark against which all other family entertainment is measured, then you should get the message.
If you only go to the theatre once this year - and there isn't much time left - then make it Slava's Snowshow. You'll laugh, be amazed, want to behave like a child and bat giant bouncy balls around the auditorium. You'll even feel a little sad. But you won't feel a single iota of regret.
* Slava's Snowshow runs until Saturday. Running time: two hours. Box office: 0870 730 1234.
