Review: Magical Exploding Boy
Venus Zarris
My best friend is perhaps one of the most loving, calm and altruistic persons that I have ever known. He is the adoring father of two young girls, a Chicago Fireman and plays Santa every year. This sweet man, who has made saving lives his career, can be instantly reduced to a homicidal maniac by one thing… Mime.
I have seen him veer his car off of the road attempting to run them down and have had to drag him out of a bar when a man showed up in full mime regalia. I told this to another friend who reacted with, “Of course he hates mimes. Everyone hates mimes although I wouldn’t get violent about it. I mean, mimes are just embarrassing to themselves and everyone else.”
The performance art form of mime has never really made a pleasing transition to the U.S. Since Marcel Marceau, the only consistently successful mime performances in America are seen in the Cirque Du Soleil shows. Other than these two imports, mime is normally a punch line.
That was true until Dean Evans.
Magical Exploding Boy is a one-man-show conceived and performed by one of Chicago’s most gifted and entertaining physical performers. From his opening silent minutia we are drawn in, not by an invisible rope but rather by Evans’ instantly endearing presence and hysterically subtle facial expressions.
He starts with a silly little dance and from that point on we are off on a tour through the whimsical physical comedy of Evans’ twisted imagination. He displays strong hints of Stan Laurel’s semi-tragic foolishness and possesses a face that is versatile enough to have achieved greatness in the era of silent film.
In this one-hour trip through the mind of Evans, artistic director of Chicago Physical Theater and ensemble member of the Neo-Futurists, we are hooked and then held in scenes where demonically possessed doll heads to control one side of his body or where space station research goes frighteningly wrong. His macabre mental musings are magnificently made flesh. Evans creates a dance of demented delights that render his audience powerless to resist, not that there is any reason to try. Whether animating inanimate objects or simply using his body as a storyboard for absurd hi jinks, his performance is an intimate example of unique invention.
Wonderful musical selections and a marvelously minimal stage set-up accent this production to perfection. The only thing that you leave this show wishing for is more, more content and more of the cleverly crafted clowning and maniacal machinations of mime that Evans makes so compelling.
3 ½ STARS