Clown is the hippest thing in comedy right now, thanks in no small part to the American act Doctor Brown, who launched its new wave by winning the Edinburgh comedy award in 2012. Now wicked, now innocent, now sensitive, now sexy, Phil Burgers’ alter ego staked out a fresh, stripped-back, non-gurny brand of silent comedy, and influenced a generation. Now he’s back, with his first solo show in a decade – a little older, a little greyer, if not as geriatric as the version of himself he offers up here, swaddled in bathrobe and surgical socks, tapping his way across the stage with a walking stick.
The significance of those stylings takes time to reveal itself, and then fairly obliquely. For much of the hour, Beturns is a loosely connected assemblage of playful clown routines, as Burgers invites an audience member to thrash his backside with a rolled-up newspaper, and another to wheel him around the stage on a swivel chair. Using little more than his expressive eyes and a suite of eloquent gestures, the Doctor asserts total if unpredictable control over the crowd. He’ll seduce us with mimed sequences of throbbing hearts and soaring birds – then puncture proceedings with a sarcastic hand-clap, mocking our delight, or some barely appropriate rough-and-tumble with another hapless volunteer.
In the context of recent clown-comedies as high-concept as Julia Masli’s ha ha ha ha ha ha ha and Frankie Thompson’s Catts, Burgers’ return can seem thin. It’s very reliant on his own charm, his openness to the moment, his interactive devilry – which are remarkable qualities, thrilling to be in the room with. Few performers are as present – as alive – as this, and his impulsiveness, his blithe delinquency, triggers moments of giddy hilarity here. But one or two riffs are eked out or revisited too many times. And the narrative, provided by a handful of cutaway scenes in which he raises a child from infancy to adulthood, is only lightly – and belatedly – sketched in. The show can feel underdeveloped, then, even as, in Burgers’ hands, clown performance is elevated to a state of grubby grace.
• Doctor Brown: Beturns is at Soho theatre, London, until 4 May
