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5.8.11
[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
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[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
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[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
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[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
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[COMEDY REVIEW] The Flying Karamazov Brothers at the Mahaiwe

2.11.08
THE MAHAIWE PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
GREAT BARRINGTON, MASS.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2008


THE FLYING KARAMAZOV BROTHERS


Review by Seth Rogovoy, editor-in-chief and critic-at-large, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine

(Great Barrington, Mass., February 10, 2008) -- They didn't fly. They aren't Russian. And they certainly aren't brothers. In spite of misrepresenting themselves thusly, the Flying Karamazov Brothers delighted a sold-out Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, packed to the gills with a crowd ranging in age from newborn to long-in-the-teeth, with their crazy, funny antics.

At its heart, the ensemble is a juggling troupe, but no ordinary one. In fact, the Flying Karamazov Brothers are a juggling troupe for people who don't really like juggling. While they are truly magnificent jugglers, they take the craft into a different realm, one where the juggling itself is merely a visual vocabulary for comedy and emotional expression.

As such, the Brothers can get away with the occasional dropped bowling pin. Life has its disappointments, and we all learn how to deal with them. Same with the Brothers. A dropped pin is merely an opportunity for greater awe and entertainment. Drop a pin? What are you going to do about it? The show must go on, and the Brothers make the most of this sort of spontaneity.

The Brothers offered other comedic routines, including musical numbers (several in which instruments are played by more than one person, sometimes while juggling), brief sketches (including one about a Polish immigrant family that finds itself in Appalachian coal-mining country and pass the time by practicing their unique style of Polish-Appalachian clog dancing), and plenty of tossed-off puns and one-liners. Early on, the group acknowledged its debt to England's Monty Python's Flying Circus comedy troupe, when one member came onstage riding a mop like a horse followed by another clapping two halves of a coconut together.

Highlights of the show included a portion where Paul Magid, aka Dmitri Karamazov, juggled several items contributed by audience members, in this case including a pat of butter and a brick of quickly melting chocolate ice cream. And the show built to a climax with the juggle of "terror," in which the members juggled and passed to each other items including a flaming torch and a meat cleaver.






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