Blood, carnage, and alien clowns: oh Canada!

At any other clown show, "boing-boing!" is a curly-haired rednoser on a pogo stick. At the Yale Rep, it's Mump the clown hacking off his little buddy Smoot's head with a machete and dangling it by an elastic artery. Only from that peculiar sub-polar colony that spawned Mike Myers and Jim Carrey can we expect this sort of raucous behavior—sure enough, they call it "Canadian Clowning." After studying this technique, which they say is derived from European, Native American, and American circus traditions, co-creators Michael Kennard and John Turner launched their clowns of horror across the border. And here they've landed for their fourth engagement at the Rep, a giggling Smoot (Turner) in red suspenders and his bow-tied buddy Mump (Kennard), who has something resembling a letter-opener protruding from his forehead.

Although they were conceived in Toronto, on stage this "demented duo" resides on a warped and dark-humored planet called "Ummo." Here, logically, the clowns speak "Ummonian," which to the uneducated audience member sounds mostly like gibberish yet mysteriously becomes English when clarification is needed. A serious caution to anyone toting a small child: don't be misled by the popcorn, cotton candy machines, and colorful balloons outside the theater. Although the program claims that the show is "for the child in each of us," this is not a warm and fuzzy production. In fact, I imagine there are psychologists who suggest that it can be some-what disconcerting for a child to watch clowns chop a puppeteer's arm off with a butcher knife.

Gary Mulcaney/Yale Rep. If Bozo was dead, he'd be rolling in his grave...

Not that there isn't a strategy behind this odd amalgamation of giggling and bleeding. As Turner points out in his notes, "tragic moments are a wonderful springboard to comedy." Maybe those crazy Canadians don't quite portray it the way the Greeks did, but tragedy is tragedy. And the butchering of a clown does have its whimsical side. Especially when his carcass is then flung into the audience by another silly clown.

Loosely contrived to include playful magic tricks, farcical costumes, and these random acts of savagery, the show's plot centers around Mump and Smoot's dealings with the evil genie Zug (Christian Laurin), who fumes and roars like Darth Vader at higher amplification with a glob more congestion. Fingers (composer Greg Morrison), an eerie musician with a web of veins latticed over the top of his head, bangs fervently on a keyboard at stage right. His noises range from thunder to tinkling music box jingles, all melded by a wickedly cartoonish sound design. As the scenes progress, Mump and Smoot enact each of their wishes from Zug, with dutiful assistance from a few uneasy audience members. If you are lucky, you will be wined and dined and given the opportunity to hurl round rubber grenades at Mump. If not, you will have your Rolex watch smashed to smithereens or your cigarette lighter doused with Ummonian slop.

Theater

Mump and Smoot in "Something Else" y Michael Kennard and John Turner Directed by Karen Hines Thurs., Sept. 14 to Sat., Oct. 7 Yale Repertory Theater $9.95

Around such impish improvisations, the performers behind the red noses neatly harmonize their jabbering conversations and comic beats. On our own planet, Mump's straightman expressions of disgust at the screwball antics of Smoot might be comparable to a Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz routine. At times, the imaginative direction (Karen Hines) largely carries the humor, as in the witty and unexpectedly-situated opening to the first scene. However, the action does drag occasionally, particularly in excessive build-ups such as the slowly-paced onset of the "Major Mump" skit, in which Smoot marches back and forth on stage and up the aisle like a waggish soldier. Here the repetition and delay that normally escalate the comedy instead take a downward turn toward the tedious and predictable.

The visual effects are gripping, however. Splashes of light and dark accentuate the fantasies onstage while the three white pyramids that comprise the set fold and deconstruct, forming everything from a dining room table to a rocket ship. In one particularly eye-boggling illusion toward the end of the show, Mump and Smoot appear to defy the law of gravity and float across the stage in their neon space suits.

But don't be fooled by the seeming weightlessness of their buoyance. "Our mentor, Richard Pochinko, talked of clowning as an exploration of both the normalcy and extremity of the self," Turner explains. "But as Mump and Smoot, we're bringing that investigation into the theater and it becomes an exploration of humanity as a whole." While exiting the theater and receiving your complimentary clown nose, stick that one on for size.

Back to A&E...