Clown’s tale is no laughing matter
There is a repeating idea of translating love and affection through “being seen” and “disappearing”
Buffoon
(out of 4) Written by Anosh Irani. Directed by Richard Rose. Until Dec. 15 at Tarragon Theatre, 30 Bridgman Avenue. TarragonTheatre.com or 416-531-1827.
Anosh Irani’s new play “Buffoon” at Tarragon Theatre stars a circus clown, but we’re far from the Big Top. Instead we’re in a bare room with a single chair blending into the same grey limestone colour as the floor, ceiling and walls, a single fluorescent lighting rod hung at the back. Felix, our clown, is similarly grim in a dirty grey jumpsuit with stringy hair and instead of the typical makeup of a circus clown, his face is covered in a gaunt blank slate of white.
“It’s chalk,” says Felix, performed by Anand Rajaram, to the audience. “Rudimentary. Like me.”
To those aware of the various genres of clown performance, the title “Buffoon” may bring to mind “Bouffon,” a physically grotesque type of clown that’s meant to reflect the worst parts of humanity back at the audience, simultaneously laughing with and at us.
Irani’s Felix doesn’t completely fit this category, but he certainly embodies the darker elements of a clown’s outsider perspective.
In fact, the journey of the play (directed by Tarragon artistic director Richard Rose) begins with Felix as a hopeful child, born into the circus life to two famous acrobats — The Flying Olga and The Amazing Frank — and tracks his growing cynicism around life and love as he increasingly embraces his true role in the circus team by taking his anxiety and pain and turning it into comedic bits.
Despite his new-found coping mechanism, the tone of Rajaram’s laughs as Felix evolve from innocence and even flirtation toward the love of his life
Aja, to angry and unhinged notes, and a more corrosive cycle between parent and child continues after the laughs die off.
Rajaram’s monologue has several shifts in time from the present — signalled by Jason Hand’s garish lighting in this stark room (including giving an extended introduction to Felix, leaving the house lights on to let performer and viewers get a good, anxious look at each other) — contrasted with the much warmer hues of his past, particularly in Felix’s interactions with his real paternal figure Smile.
He educates Felix on books while Felix’s mother, Olga, dreams of acrobatic fame and his father, Frank, dreams of getting Olga’s attention.
The other dramatic moment of lighting renders the stage awash in red as Felix falls in love for the first time at seven years old — however innocent it may be at the time, the red also suggests the danger that love poses in Felix’s life: the one-sided love he has for an absent mother, and the oppressive love Frank has for Olga, for example.
Irani’s trajectory for Felix (who came to the playwright as one character in a large ensemble play about the circus but eventually came to demand his own solo play) mostly unfolds like a downhill skier’s, much like the ill-fated bit of sledding Felix attempts in the play after a devastating event with his father, yelling “It’s all downhill from here!” — a hint at Felix’s sharpening sense of dark humour.
The final reveal of his mysterious location and the reason for his life’s story may arrive abruptly, but it’s been an involving journey to get there, especially in the hands of Rajaram, who returns to Tarragon after winning a Dora Award for his performance in Kat Sandler’s “Mustard” in 2018.
Here he’s tasked with revolving through various characters and accents — Olga is Russian, Frank is Scottish, the dressmaker is Irish and Smile has a soft and wise English accent — but these personifications only emphasize his remarkable vulnerability as Felix.
His embodiment of Felix’s hardships is constantly present, even as the clown has learned to hide them in increasingly effective ways.
There is a repeating idea of translating love and affection through “being seen” and “disappearing”; in this world, withholding love literally shrinks its characters into nothing. Felix is a flawed human, but with Rajaram’s performance, still worthy of your attention.