'He Who Gets Slapped': An unfortunate night at the circus

By Toby ZinmanFOR THE INQUIRER

Philadelphia Artists' Collective has gently transformed the dignified and beautiful Broad Street Ministry into a circus tent, with red and white banners and strings of colored lights. The occasion is their production of He Who Gets Slapped, another of their unearthed forgotten plays, although this one might have stayed buried with nobody the sadder.

Written by Leonid Andreyev and translated from Russian to English in 1922, this current adaptation is by Walter Wykes and is directed by Damon Bonetti. He Who Gets Slapped was on Broadway in 1945, starring the legendary Stella Adler, and Playbill provides this synopsis of the plot: "A brilliant scientist, whose wife cheats on him with his best friend, runs away to join the circus, where he falls for a young rider whose father is desperate to match her up with a rich baron."

In the version we get here, the central character (a writer, not a scientist) refuses to give his name and becomes "He." Ross Beschler in this role makes us see what the Count (Brian McCann) means when he says, "I don't care what they say - clowns aren't funny, they're scary as hell."

Also scary - but not in a good way - are the lion tamer (Annete Kaplafka) who wants the animals to love her but seems to want them to kill her, an acrobat (Ben Grinberg) who loves Consuelo (Isabella Fehlandt) but won't acknowledge it, the creepy Baron (Nathan Foley), two kazoo-playing clowns (Andalyn Young and Josh Totora), the Circus Master (Bob Weick), and another acrobat (Terry Brennan).

The plot as presented lacks any sort of coherence. Characters remain undeveloped, motivations are opaque; they laugh when they should cry, gaze wistfully off into the distance when there's no wist to be seen, break into surreal, ludicrous tangoes, perform various gymnastic and juggling acts awkwardly, and just generally behave weirdly - and take a very long time doing it. This is not helped by the painful amateurishness of the cast, with the exceptions of Beschler and McCann.

The drama concludes "tragically," but then, inexplicably, begins again - dead people rise, rose petals fall from the ceiling, and various inelegant exits are made.

The production was touted as having been a collaboration with the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts. The actors trained "for months" to learn tumbling, bullwhip, hat tricks, juggling and acrobatics. I'll look at real circus performers with much more admiration in future, since it's obviously really hard to do this stuff well.

Philadelphia Artists' Collective at Broad Street Ministry, 315 S. Broad St. Through April 16. Tickets $15-25. Information: (215) 551-1543 or www.philartistscollective.org.