New Vaudeville

by Flower City Vaudeville

Review by Paige Anderson

Flower City Vaudeville, last year’s winner of the Ithaca Fringe’s Andrew M. Dixon Award, returns to Ithaca Fringe with A Night in Towanda, a new show that is a joyful, high-energy, raucous delight, jam-packed with clowning, acrobatic feats, magic, music, sight gags, and word play, including a dramatic escape, a high wire act, and one of the most bizarre wind ensembles of all time. These masters of the “New Vaudeville” captivated from the moment they made their entrance (on tiny clown bicycles) to the final curtain.

Vaudevillians The Emcee (Ted Baumhauer), The Maestro ( Ward Hartenstein) and Hashadoo (Richard Hughson) are taking their show on the road to Towanda. Their truck has broken down en route, so they hitchhike to the American Legion Hall, arriving moments before the show is to begin, but without their props. Of course the show must go on, so the ingenious trio makes do with substitute props scavenged by Ralph, the American Legion Hall custodian.

What follows is an irresistible, hilarious, masterpiece of silliness. “This is going to be dumb,” warns one of the vaudevillians, before the beautifully goofy escape from the quickly improvised “Ancient Chamber of Doom.” There are many other moments in this production that are complete gems — too many to list — but the Baroque Wind Ensemble is one superb example. It begins with penny-whistled English folk tunes and a picaresque about a dancing Will Kemp, but the performance begins to morph, brilliantly, moment by moment, in a manner that is both hallucinatory and wildly funny. Another virtuoso bit of physical comedy and acrobatics, involving an improvised tightrope, juggling, and accordion playing, is so impressive, so incredibly funny, that it is quite literally stunning: finally, the audience is warned: “Applaud! He can’t keep this up forever!”

A “Night in Towanda" combines the joyful immediacy and spontaneous quality of the best improvisational theatre, with the impeccable timing and choreography of a polished vaudeville routine. it is not to be missed.