Клоун Энрико Туче представил подготовленный номер с элементами импровизации в театре Hoots

Enrico Touché: Hot Knees Enrico Touché has a great monochrome look from his eyebrows to his specs – and hair that looks like it's made out of liquorice shoelaces. His shtick is the traditional clowning fare, opening with a familiar bit of business revolving around his hat and some increasingly intricate mimed variations on the Catholic blessing played over choir music, but with gestures you wouldn’t normally see from your local priest. Then to the main order of business, in which he goes from punter to punter asking what their dreams are to set up each skit. Not that it matters what the response is, for this is not a show built on improv, but the ideas Touché has already brought into the yurt. Thus he gets a line of people bobbing up and down, teaches someone how to use the stiff rope prop magicians use, and enables someone to fly a rocket to the moon – or at least a toy one to the back of the room. It’s fun, but everything seems a little too prepared and formulaic, even if the laughs come from things going slightly wrong such as the woman struggling to inflate a balloon or the moustache that refuses to stick to the top lip, as all comedy moustaches are required to do. Nevertheless, the play is always safe, celebrating people for taking part, and the required sense of happy community is spread around the small venue. There is an explicitly stated message at the end of this, encouraging us all to live out our dreams, just as a certain performer did in giving up his job in business to become an internationally touring clown going by the name of Enrico Touché. Now he's successfully taken one risk, maybe he could try a few more in his performance... Review date: 26 Aug 2026 Reviewed by: Steve Bennett Reviewed at: Hoots @ Potterow