ErictheFred

100487 original

Chris Lynam has worked as a clown for years. In his new play, ErictheFred, he attempts a new challenge: to tell the story of a melancholic clown reliving his glory days for a contemporary audience. It is a daring staging with grit and soul; the audience all the while encouraged to exhort Lynam's clown to go on and on.

Behind a mesh screen, our clown appears, uncomfortably constrained by a frilly white dress. He rips the thing to shreds and in new attire—a plain-looking suit—he performs his classic mix of slapstick, mime and comedy. The act is interspersed with projections that expose Lynam's private doubts, insecurities and imagined successes. 

Out of his comfort zone and aquiring a gun, he shoots (and kills) a butterly in a tragic moment. To punish himself, he whimsically attempts death by hanging and ends up bouncing around at the end of a noose that won't kill him. He tries to take his own life again later with a pen knife with no real edge.

Yet the play has plenty of its own razor sharpness – at its close the stage implodes, the set falling down around him and us, sitting terrified in the audience. Unperturbed by the chaos, Eric begins to mend a flattened wind instrument damaged in the blast: it is the show's finest moment. No mere mishap will impair this clown's will to go on.