January 6-12, 2005

artpicks

Bowled Over

by Lori Hill

Theater

Hard-boiled eggs. Spoons. Newspapers.

Time was, in the hands of a couple of clowns on a vaudeville stage, this was all an audience needed to be entertained.

Well, it still is.

All Wear Bowlers, a funny, sweet and almost completely silent show created by Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford, blew audiences away at the 2003 Fringe with its ingenious staging and the impeccable timing of its actors. Besides excellent egg antics and bowler-hat trickery, Sobelle and Lyford seemed to jump in and out of a projection screen, trying to keep up with their celluloid selves, filmed in the foothills of Palo Alto.

The premise is simple yet clever. Two silent film clowns trapped in a haunted movie house try all the tricks of their trade to extricate themselves from this existential nightmare. 1812 Productions is now producing the show, and since the Fringe, the creators have tinkered with the piece, including a new film segment and work with a director, Aleksandra Wolska. Sobelle says, "Now it holds together more like a play, and less like a series of vignettes. … We didn't want to repeat the same trick as last time. So this ups the ante, gets into the darker side of the show."

Inspired by the spirit of Laurel and Hardy, Bowlers takes a wider look at the loneliness of the everyman clown and other philosophical questions raised in the gestures of Charlie Chaplin, the plays of Samuel Beckett and the painting of René Magritte.

On top of all the existentialism and aesthetics, Sobelle and Lyford haven't forgotten what the good old days of theater were all about: pure entertainment.

All Wear Bowlers, Jan. 7, 8, 11, 8 p.m.; Jan. 9, 2 p.m.; Jan. 12, 7 p.m., through Feb. 6, $10-$30, Mum Puppettheatre, 115 Arch St., 215-592-9560, tickets@1812productions.org.