Theater review - 1995
	Fool Moon

GANNETT SUBURBAN NEWSPAPERS
   BY JACQUES LE SOURD

Those cool clowns Bill Irwin and David Shiner are back on Broadway with
"Fool Moon," a show that could give family entertainment a good name.

First seen two years ago, this seven-man show seems even sharper and funnier
now. Besides Irwin and Shiner, the five other men onstage are the Red Clay
Ramblers, a very hip string band that provides every kind of music for the
duo's hi-jinks and performs some stand-alone numbers of its own.

Since Irwin and Shiner are essentially a silent comedy act, the music is
welcome. "Fool Moon," which credits no director, is an exquisitely balanced
piece of theater.

The good cop-bad cop equation between the two comics seems less pronounced
now, which is all to the good: They seem more of a team.

AUDIENCE, BEWARE!

Shiner still opens the show by physically manhandling the first three rows
of the audience --ticket-buyers, beware! --in the role of a huffy patron who
can't find his seat.

His character enjoys rudely evicting ticket holders from their rightful
places, only to be promptly evicted himself by ushers in the orchestra and
both boxes. Along the way, this playgoer from hell climbs over people's
heads, mussing hairdos, stealing coats and lifting wallets. Presumably a lot
of his victims are willing plants, as are the folks Shiner drags onstage to
participate in several sketches.

Meanwhile, Irwin, preparing his entrance onstage, does battle with a
recalcitrant microphone cord and various magnetic fields intent on pulling
him off the stage. He creates the hilariously scary illusion of an undertow
from the wings and beneath the curtain behind him. When that curtain rises,
it pulls Irwin up with it, feet first.

Irwin and Shiner share a limitless mobility which is not just external but
internal: In an inspired sketch in which they play two commuters arguing
while they wait for a train, the two comics seem to expand and deflate by
turns with shifts in their conversation.

TRICKY GIMMICKS

Irwin and Shiner owe much of their impact as visual sight gags to the
egregiously bad (thus funny) suits they wear, and to a variety of other
costumes and hats cunningly designed by Bill Kellard. They specialize, of
course, in hat tricks.

In a classic Harlequin sketch, Irwin manages a complete costume and
character change every time he ducks behind a curtain, playing Pantalone
chasing Harlequin. This also involves an Irwin signature gag: The artist
seemingly descending a staircase, inside an open trunk. Both Irwin and
Shiner often seem about to lose control of their own body parts: Limbs,
hands, even tongues can suddenly take on a life of their own and run away
with their owners.

At the end of Act 1, Shiner picks a woman from the audience to enact a date,
riding an invisible car to an imaginary restaurant, where the waiter is an
obtrusively amorous Irwin in false nose and mustache. The fun is in watching
the volunteer pick up her silent cues, and get reprimanded in mime for
missing some of them.

Near the end of Act 2, this gimmick takes on epic proportions as Shiner puts
four members of the audience through their paces as the impromptu cast and
crew of a silent movie in the making. Every flub requires a new take, as the
sketch takes shape while unraveling into comic mayhem.

Children in the audience love to see grown-ups look so foolish, but the
laughter is universal. The Ramblers provide all the necessary sound effects,
adding to an atmosphere of casual but well-crafted fun.

"Fool Moon" is sophisticated entertainment for all ages.