Furiozo – Wardrobe

Furiozo: Man Looking for Trouble at The Wardrobe Theatre is an absurd punk-rock clown show that paints an intriguing portrait of toxic masculinity. This wordless physical comedy show from Polish clown Piotr Sikora has police chases, petty theft, drugs, and longing for the greatest thrill of all, true love.

Sikora is a comedian and improviser associated with the improvisational theatre groups Klancyk and Hofesinka. He underwent intensive physical theatre training, studying in Italy, the USA, and the UK. Drawn to the stage personas of clowns, jesters, and lovable idiots Piotr crafts, these characters have been moulded into his unique comedic acts.

Furiozo, a grunting, angry and hooliganistic man with a kind heart, searches for trouble and finds it as well as love and friendship, in this highly interactive piece of clowning theatre. He is a captivating blend of threat and entertainment, enticing the audience with mischief, while also seducing them with tenderness and romanticism.

Throwing his body around the stage, not only for our pleasure but also to seduce potential lovers, he operates as a larger-than-life character in this tale of hard living, toxic masculinity, and addictions.

Importantly though, the audience is cared for as much as challenged in a consent-first approach during the interactive moments. Audience members are roped in to tell the story, but Sikora’s grunting, snarling alter-ego acts out the toxicity with underlying tenderness.

He might bring a scarily intense energy to the room, but it quickly dissipates. Furiozo handles each participant with unexpected care, transforming the experience from intimidating to exhilarating.

Guiding us through laughter, horror, gentle discoveries, and precise physical theatrics, Sikora can lift an eyebrow and turn the mood. In a completely non-verbal show, this ‘gentle-faced’ aggro punk clown can hold space with gravity and laughter simultaneously.

Right from the start, wearing yellow and black wrestling shorts and a silver chain, a shouting angry man with a skinhead comes crashing into the scene while attacking a teddy bear, and everyone prepares for a wild ride. Furiozo asks for permission to break the rules, and the audience, through nods and smiles or thumbs up, allow it.

Almost immediately, he goes off the rails, beginning a thrilling story of robbery, shootouts, car chases, jailbreaks and relationship break-ups and sex, cinematic in scope, punkish in execution.

He fights a bear on stage – a tiny stuffed one that he dramatically wrestles to the ground; he points a gun at the audience – but it’s just his hand as an imaginary weapon; and he does a daredevil motorbike jump over the crowd – except it’s a tiny, plastic kid’s bicycle that we all collectively have to pass around.

We have a show of contradictions then – harsh, toxic masculinity on one side and gentle, introspection on the other. There’s an early realisation that there’s much more to Furiozo than just the grunting and hostility, and over a frenzied hour we, quite literally, see his huge heart and warm to him, even encourage his better behaviours and search for love.

Sikora brilliantly walks the tightrope between hot-headed aggression and a sense of inclusive, daft spontaneous fun. And for a genre that’s always in danger of slipping into cruelty and mean-spiritedness, this is an absurd, hilarious, and fantastic contemporary take on toxic masculinity, and offers further proof that putting a little humanity in our comedy always gets the best results.

Review now up on Bristol 24/7 website. https://www.bristol247.com/.../review-furiozo-man.../