bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Kevin Kwong

Paper World

Mimirichi Clowns and  Pantomime Theatre

Sai Wan Ho Civic Centre Theatre

Reviewed: August 5

Children can be quite cruel - physically violent, even - when they're overly excited. Present them with a bunch of cute clowns and what do they do? Pelt them with missiles. This aggressive streak was evident at  the Mimirichi Clowns and Pantomime Theatre production.

In Paper World, clowns  Andrii Gonsales, Oleksandr Perehuda, Igor Ivashchenko and Mykola Odrekhivskyy from Ukraine make versatile use of paper in their  simple gags.

Throughout the 90-minute performance, paper was  folded, unfolded, ripped to shreds, screwed up into tiny and big balls - and even made into a telescope. The young audience loved the slapstick,  but grown-ups found it  quite repetitive  and boring.

Things started to get interesting when the quartet came over to the audience and played tricks on them (such as swapping their spectacles around and stealing their bags). The children were squealing - and so were the parents. Some were begging to be spared, which was fun to watch.

But the show got  out of control when the clowns - having made quite a big mess on stage with paper everywhere - invited the children to take part in what was supposed to be a clean-up, but ended up as a massive paper fight.

The two boys sitting next to me (unsupervised, with their parents nowhere in sight) dashed to the front of the stage and started throwing paper at the clowns. Some children got so excited they started hitting them. They only calmed down when the ushers herded them back to their seats and the show moved on.

Towards the end, in a moment of seriousness, the clowns mimed to the audience, asking them to pass one large sheet of paper from the front to the back  of the auditorium without destroying it. We should really treasure paper, they seemed to say. But this message was obviously completely lost, because half way up, the children were already ripping it up. The exercise was never quite completed.

Poor clowns. Poor cleaners  at the Sai Wan Ho Civic Centre Theatre, who had to clean up the mess (which, we were reassured, would be recycled).



Paper World