Chris Lynam - ErictheFred

Chris Lynam: ErictheFred

Chris Lynam - ErictheFredChris Lynam is a master clown who has been a stalwart of street performance, cabaret, festival and stage for over 30 years.   Often outrageous, frequently provocative, sometimes aggressive and dangerous, he is a trickster figure whose set pieces are undercut by manic improvisations from a quicksilver persona which manages to both delight and outrage his audience.

In ErictheFred Chris covers new ground in which he performs a less exuberant, more meditative role – an ageing, red-nosed, pierrot-style clown who is looking back on his memories, hopes, and dreams, successes and failures.  Developed with collaborators including John Wright and Thomas Kubinek, the show synthesises silent comedy routines presenting a range of emotions, as when he repeatedly encounters and plays with a butterfly, manipulated offstage by the stagehands, which is always slightly out of his reach.  This image is simultaneously realistic and dreamlike, and Lynam manages to convey this tension through his virtuoso skills of body and face as well as his play with his audience.  His performance is counterpointed by haunting music and sound by composer Kevin Sargent, which reinforces the hallucinatory feel of the show.  At other times the show approaches tragedy, such as the scene towards the end of the show when, reminiscent of the commedia dell’arte lazzi in which Arleccino attempts suicide, Chris attempts to hang himself.  At first he is unable to do so as the noose doesn’t work properly, or a strand of rope keeps getting in the way.  Eventually he succeeds in leaping off his props box only to discover that the rope is elastic and bounces him back up again.  True to form, objects take on a life of their own, and the clown will not die.

The show is enhanced by excellent use of technology and projection onto a gauze front cloth, which allows Chris to confront various versions of himself using digital animation which veer between life-size and magnified or minimised forms of the character of Eric.  Here too he plays with a delicacy and a subtlety which suggests a character that is elusive, changeable and defies attempts to pin him down.  Just when you think you have grasped hold of him he slips away.  Drawing on these techniques and effects ErictheFred has the potential to be a vehicle for the clown in the twenty-first century.  Yet at times it feels as though Chris’s performance is constrained by the weight of the demands of the show which require him to balance deep emotions with the earthiness of the clown.  To some extent the performance lacked a playfulness and freedom which would have enabled the show to go into darker and more challenging territory.

In the world outside the show, there is a page on Facebook for clown discussions entitled Clown Power.  The comments about clown and clowning can sometimes become theoretical and highfalutin’, and Chris will bring the debate down to earth by posting a single word comment of ‘sosidge’.  What this delicate and touching performance needs perhaps is more grounding – that is, ‘sosidge’.  However, it is early days for this demanding and difficult show and when, towards the end, the character is subjected to a hilarious collapsing set, but emerges unscathed from the ensuing chaos, awkwardly triumphant to serenade his audience on an oversized, battered French Horn, there are glimpses of its potential in its mixture of foolishness, slapstick and tragedy.