Clown Show review – after 250 years, the American dream explodes over one anarchic night

King’s theatre, Edinburgh
The pranks and pratfalls in Geoff Sobelle’s show mark the US’s 250th anniversary with nihilistic excess

They are a forlorn lot, this bunch who shuffle glumly to the front of the stalls. In white face, funeral veils, mismatched jodhpurs and tailcoats, they gaze across the auditorium to the timeless strum of a folk song. They cheer up after the curtain rises and – to audience applause – their big top reveals itself in all its weatherbeaten glitz.

This is where these motley figures belong and for much of Geoff Sobelle’s characteristically uncategorisable show, they play it exactly as you would expect clowns to play it – albeit with some scenes more entertaining than others. There are musical skits, sight gags with false hands and spare legs, upturned boxes of bees and bags of popcorn thrown from the stage with lawless abandon.