Wisey Best Clown: All of them! Especially Mark Bedard, OSF

The nominations for best clown are:

Chris Ensweiler, The Servant of Two Masters, Seattle Shakespeare Company

Chris Bell, Elephant's Graveyard, Balagan Theatre

Mark Bedard, The Servant of Two Masters, Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Orion Protonentis, Titus Andronicus, GreenStage

Kerry Ryan, The Tempest and The Servant of Two Masters, Seattle Shakespeare Company

Fanny Tragic, Schmorgasborg, Balagan Theatre

Matt Hornbeck, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Theater Schmeater

Armando Duran, All's Well That Ends Well, Oregon Shakespeare Festival

We saw a wonderful variety of clowns this year showcasing the role of clown in theater, so we just had to create a special new category just for 2009 of "best clown." These clowns are physical, corporeal, and acrobatic, as likely to do their thing with pantomime and juggling and other physical arts as with speech. They're usually disguised or masked. In some way, they're outside or aside of the community portrayed in the play, which often means they're interacting with the audience in a way the other characters aren't. They may be of another place or no place or are traveling from or to somewhere else (as in the tradition of the tramp or hobo clown). They're transgressors; they break boundaries and rules, they're outrageous and uninhibited tricksters, they interrupt and disrupt, and do and say things no one else can. And all of that together is why they bother us, scare us, and make us laugh.

Armando Duran played the clown in All's Well That Ends Well at Oregon Shakespeare Festival as an observer in the hobo/tramp tradition, and figured prominently in the play's somewhat surprise ending. He was revealed through "home movies" as reliving and reflecting on Helena and Bertram's story—his deceased parents—as he picks up a suitcase and leaves the stage.

Kerry Ryan was nominated as much for her clown skills and talents as for the roles she played. We saw her as Trinculo the jester in The Tempest and Smeraldina in The Servant of Two Masters, both at Seattle Shakespeare Company (and we just saw her again at this past week's 14/48: The World's Quickest Theatre Festival). Her physical clowning and comedy are terrific, and the program confirms that she is an experienced puppeteer, dancer, and physical comedian. It shows.

Matt Hornbeck gets special mention for stamina and endurance as Klaus, the Apprentice in Theater Schmeater's outdoor The Sorcerer's Apprentice this summer. He was equal to all of the audience interaction, and it was especially fun to see him engaging the little kids.

Funniest clown EVER was burlesque clown Fanny Tragic in two routines at Schmorgasborg, Balagan Theatre's late-night theater mash-up. One routine involved an air-inflated Peeps costume, but the one that really had me splitting my sides was the snuggie strip tease. Unforgettable!

We saw some disturbing clowns, too. As a child I was afraid of a clown portrait that hung in a relative's house. Now that imagine is supplanted by Orion Protonentis, playing Aaron in Titus Andronicus (GreenStage, indoors), as a particularly evil, maniacal clown. He was funny and horrifying and creepy and irresistible.

And Chris Bell was the most moving clown of all, playing a circus clown in Balagan Theatre's Elephant's Graveyard. That makeup really runs when tears are streaming down his face, and I loved the way his physicality was so often directed to producing sounds which became part of the score of the play.

Chris Ensweiler was delightful as Truffaldino in Seattle Shakes' The Servant of Two Masters, a classic commedia dell'arte Harlequin role, playing off his fellow cast members with perfect timing.

We were lucky enough to see Servant twice this year, and in a tough decision, the nod for Best Clown of 2009 goes to Mark Bedard as Truffaldino in Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production. His performance was physically demanding, funny, and commanding. He was perfectly in character and self-referentially funny as he encountered our particular Saturday afternoon performance's surprises, including a cell phone dropped on stage, an audience member who tried to be as funny as Bedard (he wasn't), and some wayward fake blood.

A big thanks to all our clowns this year and the companies and productions that tickled us with these smart, funny, naughty roles.

Tempest brings treasures at Seattle Shakes

Every time I see a production of William Shakespeare's The Tempest I grow more fond of the play. The latest, put on by Seattle Shakespeare Company and directed by George Mount, adds to our appreciation immensely. The show includes a number of memorable performances, the best of which is a marvelous turn by Michael Winters as Prospero.

Winters brings tremendous range to the role, from thundering anger that rattled the theater to tender matchmaking to tearful forgiveness. (That's Winters as Prospero in hacked-off mode at right in a Seattle Shakes photo by John Ulman.) Winters is a treasure. He's been all over Seattle stages of late. Recently Weisenheimer has seen him in You Can't Take it With You at the Seattle Rep, and in Mame at the 5th Avenue. The Seattle Times ran a nice Q&A between Winters and Misha Berson as the play opened earlier this month.

Another recently discovered favorite, Carolyn Marie Monroe, plays Prospero's daughter Miranda, a far cry from the grumpy goth teen Rachel she portrayed in End Days in February at Seattle Public Theatre. Monroe also played Opehlia in the Green Stage production of Hamlet last summer.

The two other women in the cast were marvelous as well. Hana Lass as Ariel demonstrated a huge singing voice, necessary to be heard above the howling wind and crashing waves of the tempest. Kerry Ryan was a hoot as Trinculo, with her slapstick scenes and funny faces and voices. Ryan may be Shakes' go-to woman comic; she was also a laugh riot in Servant of Two Masters earlier this season.

Props to Peter Dylan O'Connor for his portrayal of Caliban, done with semi-human zeal in a way that brought to mind the creepy Gollum from the Lord of the Rings flicks.

The costumes by Doris Black were grand, particularly Caliban and Ariel. The latter impressed my Sweetie, the official scorer, who claimed that she might have become an actress if she'd known she could wear a bustle. Ariel's headgear included a veil and all sorts of belts and ropes and sufficiently shipwreck-y stuff. That's Lass as Ariel in another Ulman photo at right. Click here to see it big.

Our one quibble with the show was the decision to play it as sort of end-of-life dream sequence for Prospero. That's a hospital gown under Winters' robe in the photo above, and he wears a patient ID bracelet throughout as well. While the "white light" scene at the end was effective, overall the hospital thing didn't really work for me, and the periodic noise of the machine that goes "ping" was something of a distraction. Who left their cell phone on?

Still and all, The Tempest is a good story well told. It runs at Seattle Shakespeare Company through June 28.