The Flying Karamazov Brothers give a new meaning to the word “practised”. Their first stage show in 1981 was called Juggling and Cheap Theatrics - a smart title that they could have kept for the show they bring to London’s West End, largely made of routines that this celebrated US comedy-juggling act have been doing for decades. It’s weird to see in YouTubes of their early performances some of the material I watched last night at the Vaudeville. Still, the fact is those old juggling routines remain mesmerising to the eye, even if their humour is as worn-through as the bum of Seasick Steve’s overalls.
One of the piratical young men in those 1983 videos, Paul Magid, is now the veteran and director of the current touring show, and is no doubt the source of the, erm, classic status of the material. A big old hippy biker type with a grizzled ponytail and a supersized nose, he has enough likeness to Groucho Marx to kick off various slapstick hommages with his three younger colleagues, a generation of jugglers grown up since the FKBs launched in 1973 and who may not share quite Magid's humour and music references.
There's so much whip-smart physical comedy I've seen in contemporary dance that the Marx-ist slapstick efforts here don’t have the éclat and silly originality that's needed. On the other hand neither could the Marx Brothers juggle complicatedly in syncopated rhythms and chat to each other while doing so, confidently chucking in curveballs to try to provoke a dropped catch. (Juggling is dropping, as Magid has been telling audiences for around 30 years.)
For juggling also means joking, and there are millions in the US who swear the Karamazovs deliver both equally. Well, yes, the stage has a kind of hobo-city zaniness - shaky skyscrapers of empty cardboard boxes - and the guys look funny yet loveable in black kilts, like funereal Scottish dancers. Still, the Karamazovs should have spotted how high, and how competitive, both UK and US comic standards are now, even in music hall and magic shows. While all their juggling comes inseparable from a genial comic patter that runs through the physical rhythms like letters in a stick of rock - which I definitely get - there were several stand-alone comedy bits of dodgier prognosis. The goofy male ballerinas market was long ago taken to a new level by Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, while the attempts at British political jokes are just lame.
Last night's audience instantly reconnected in the juggling stunts, though. One sequence is daring - it has a woman spectator invited on stage in order to suffer flaming torches passing swiftly inches before her nose and behind her hair. Another is a kind of insane music: a half-asleep juggler is forced into action by the others and becomes apparently a multi-armed drummer simultaneously juggling clubs and thwacking at tambours being flipped behind his back by his colleagues, in a pleasingly complex percussive rhythm.
A third is a “challenge” where spectators supply random objects for juggling. It seems inevitable that the ones that make the most mess will be chosen (here: a large iced cake, a leaking bag of flour, and a flitch of raw British bacon). The best patter routine makes a feature of the four apologising to each other for dropping clubs, “So sorry”, and chorusing in a British accent, “We’re so, so SORRY... We’ve been studying your culture.”
Rather less climactic is the long preparation throughout the show of various “terror” implements to be incorporated into juggling - we all know that cleavers and raw eggs are catnip to jugglers, but wot, no chainsaws? This show does seem a little tired to me, but then the Flying Karamazovs have performed on bills with the Grateful Dead, Frank Sinatra, Placido Domingo, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner (in The Jewel of the Nile) and several US symphony orchestras. So they probably have a crumpled 35-year-old Rizla paper stuck on their dressing room mirror with a Biro scribble on it that if it's working you don't fix it.
Book tickets for The Flying Karamazov Brothers are at the Vaudeville Theatre, London, until 10 September
This 2008 YouTube shows excerpts of the '4Play' show which the Karamazovs perform at the Vaudeville
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