Hacki Ginda
nytheatre.com review by Ivanna Cullinan
September 9, 2006
Hacki Ginda briefly and beautifully occupied space at the NY Clown Theater Festival. This enormously fun clown from Germany, accompanied for this show by his son Myron, created a light, lovely cabaret to lose oneself in enjoying. He was also in town on the bill for Circus Contraption and I can only hope he will be back. Often.
His program blurb asserts that he is "a loud clown with a real affection for his audience." For the performance I saw, he certainly could be heard but was never loud in an annoying sense of the word, and his fondness for the audience could be felt. Hacki Ginda adores us.
After a brief voice-of-God opening, Hacki appears dressed in bowtie, button-down shirt, and kilt. The kilt is black, of course, as he is dressed for business—funny business, which commences immediately. There is a chase sequence which inventively introduces Myron into the action. Once they are both in place, off they go into a very fun and gentle cabaret of routines and riffs. The energy of this piece is somehow solidly self-assured; there is nothing frenetic or assaulting about it. It is the performance of an experienced artist, who seems as interested as I was in what would happen next.
This confident ease continues when he brings an audience member up on stage to induct him into this world of oversize glasses and hats. There is no feeling of "uh-oh, this guy is in for it"; instead, there is only warm anticipation.
The apparent effortlessness of the performer in no way mitigates the extraordinarily high level of fun. During the show Hacki teaches the audience magic, plays guitar, conquers the misbehavior of his microphone (and its repeated assaults on him); and generally wins over all the hearts in the room. Myron contributes to the charm with a series of exquisite bubble creations, some apparently made with the help of five offstage firemen in varying states of inebriation.
Truly a delightful evening, and as his website puts it—"Alles wird gut."
