Cirque de Legume ("Circus of Vegetable") is a great clown show performed hilariously by Jamie Carswell and Nancy Trotter Landry as part of the annual Imagine Ireland Festival. They are classic red-nosed clowns, with a novel idea (vegetables), creatively directed by Pablo Ibarluzea. A head of lettuce is an animal who follows orders, does tricks and barks. Carswell becomes a horse: expressions, trots, movements that are real and satirical at the same time. Landry beats the horse with a leek stalk and feeds it carrots, which it eats and spits -- vegetables fly.
The grownups laugh, the kids in the audience sit there amazed, not quite believing what they are seeing. Then red peppers are used as if they're knives. A potato, zucchinis as musical instruments, a beet as a hypnosis pendulum-- which puts her into a trance where she is transformed into a chicken, a goat and a squirrel. She transforms into a great seal who does seal tricks, and there is a chair entanglement with tumbling, and the topper is onion peeling and biting as a striptease. These two superb clowns dance and cavort beautifully in a boldly ridiculous performance.
