THE GREAT CLOWN BANK SHOW

Though Open Fist Theatre Company scores an “A+” for adventurousness, the often entertaining “immersive theater extravaganza” that is Hank Jacobs’ The Great Clown Bank Show proves somewhat of a hit-or-miss enterprise.

Not that I went in unprepared, because as intrigued as I was by the idea of a “a wild-eyed, clown-capitalist circus fantasia” that promised songs, dances, and aerial feats, I was also aware of the potential for preachiness given its promised focus on “some of the worst excesses of late-stage capitalism as exemplified by The Great Clown Bank.”

On the plus side, Open Fist has gone all out where production design is concerned, beginning the moment you walk through the theater doors to be greeted by a lobby turned into the most dazzling of circus arcades courtesy of Immersive Experience Designer DJ Hand–Crank.

Enter the stage area and you’ll take a seat on one of three sides bordering a one-ring circus where ringmaster Jacobs will soon be introducing us to the most avaricious clan of clowns ever to rob a country blind.

There’s Great Clown Bank founder Gus Greedy (Davis Barber), his crafty wife Glenda Gaines Greedy (Clara York), his incompetent elder son Gary (Matthew Goodrich), his “big-dicked/small-brained” younger son Glenn (Kevin Brennan), Glenn’s gold-digging wife Greta (Elle Engelman), and the couple’s twin spawn Grizz (Tambrie Allsup) and Griffin (Torrin Kelly), each more moneygrubbing and twisted than the other and all of them sporting clown-appropriate makeup.

From the get-go, it’s clear that imagination will be key to bringing The Great Clown Bank Show to life under the big top as six of its cast members, hidden inside head-to-toe body stockings, configure and reconfigure themselves into a bank counter, a vault, and finally a house inside which Glenda is literally bursting to hatch the eggs that will become Grizz and Griffin.

And that’s just the start of two hours of circus shenanigans and sermonizing on nationwide conglomerates bent on buying influence, bribing lawmakers and regulators, performing credit default swaps and leveraged buyouts, and anything else their Greedy shrunken hearts desire.

It doesn’t help that the melodies Mike Messer has composed for Jacobs’ lyrics are a mostly unmemorable bunch or that the cast’s vocal talents are mixed (Robby Good is music director), nor that the characters Jacobs has created are allegorical archetypes of a decidedly unsympathetic nature, in other words not the kind of three-dimensional characters whose lives an audience member can care about or become invested in.

For this reason, despite the most enthusiastic and energetic and committed of casts (all of whom appear to be having about as much fun as I’ve ever seen a cast have on stage), I found my interest lagging at times when it should have been piqued.

That’s not to say that The Great Clown Bank Show doesn’t have its captivating moments. (Avery Shannon Lynch’s aerial feats inside, atop, and around a hula hoop suspended above the stage earn deserved oohs, aahs, and cheers.)

I also can’t overemphasize how ingenious Jacob’s staging is, aided and abetted by Benny Lee Harris Lumpkins Jr.’s fanciful costumes and Anna Kraus’s imaginative clown apparatus and props, and though the cast (completed by multitalented multitaskers Amiée Conn, Carmella Jenkins and burlesque captain Bethany Koulias) is primarily made up of movers rather than trained dancers, they acquit themselves surprisingly well when executing Raquis Petree’s choreographed dance moves.

Last but not least, each week’s shows feature a special guest circus performer to close Act One on a unique note. (At the performance reviewed, it was Michael Rayner, aka The Broken Juggler, who not only balanced three different audience members’ shoes on his nose for seven seconds each, including a particularly daunting zebra-print high-heeled platform boot, but managed to unwrap a cheeseburger and send its pickles flying simply by rolling it sideways atop a spinning parasol.)

The Great Clown Bank Show is produced by Jeremy D. Thompson for Open Fist Theatre Company and features circus music by Stephen Jacobs and fight choreography by Allsup. Kelsey Kusinitz is associate producer. John Dimitri is stage manager. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

There’s a great deal to recommend in Open Fist Theatre Company’s latest if not quite enough for me to be as wowed as I was hoping to be.

That being said, if you’re looking for something truly out of the ordinary (and don’t mind some preaching to the choir about the evils of capitalism), you won’t find anything more out of the ordinary this summer than The Great Clown Bank Show.

Open Fist Theatre Company @ Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village. Through August 1. Fridays at 9:00. Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 7:00.
www.openfist.org

–Steven Stanley
July 4, 2026
Photos: John Dlugolecki

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

 

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