REVIEW: Snow Days and Plane Delays (The Mime Company)

The beauty of silence enhances little Christmas rituals

The Mime Company presents

Snow Days & Plane Delays: Evening of Holiday Mime

Created by Mime Company ensemble Directed by Amanda Brown at Studio BE, 3110 N. Sheffield (map) through Jan 2  |  tickets: $12-$20   |  more info

Reviewed by Paige Listerud

Face it–Christmas is exhausting. The holiday demands physical, mental and emotional energy from everyone participating–and even from those who don’t. Decorating, shopping, cooking, wrapping gifts, assembling them, greeting friends and relatives—and then there’s the obstacle course of traveling to your holiday destination. Amanda Brown of The Mime Company directs a well honed and superbly disciplined troupe that can draw out the humor and poignancy of yearly Christmas rituals in their latest production, Snow Days and Plane Delays: an Evening of Holiday Mime. Nothing impresses like the exceeding professionalism of the total ensemble—their slightest gestures and facial expressions speak volumes, and their coordinated physical discipline astonishes.

A man packs up and prepares to leave for his flight. Interspersed between the trials and tribulations of his trip–going through security, finding a seat in the overcrowded waiting area, packing his carry-on luggage on the plane, etc.—are tales and scenes associated with Christmas. Carolers go door to door, struggling to find a receptive audience for their songs. A family struggles to take a decent Christmas photo through the years. A mother and father fuss over an assembly-required bicycle late into the night. All terribly familiar scenes, but more—the ensembles’ unity, balance and symmetry brings greater immediacy and intimacy to each relatively minor activity, evoking a closer and deeper look at each human relationship and gesture.

The Mime Company heightens the bittersweet passing of time with the shifting nature of family, as children emerge from childhood to take on the challenges of their parents’ care in “Family Photo Album.” “The Little Match Girl” resurfaces as a classic to remind audiences of the suffering of the destitute homeless during this time of year. Into the mix, the ensemble amuses with delightfully ridiculous situations—a guy just learning to ski, ballet dancers headed on a total Nutcracker train wreck, and couples losing and finding each other at the mall, while negotiating its bewildering assortment of escalators, elevators and walkways.

Snow Days and Plane Delays will only be playing over the January 2^nd, so catch it in its short run as a breather from the holiday madness. Looking at all our frenzied rituals under the microscope of silence makes them special and, perhaps, even less arduous.

Rating: ★★★

Video below: The Mime Company’s A Holiday Evening of  Mime in 2008, created by Matt Paolelli.