Karamazovs fly high at New York's 'Other End'

 By Dave Walden Arlington, MA

In recent months the West Coast-based Flying Karamazov Brothers have had several engagements in the East. I caught their act in November at "The Other End," a cabaret in Green­wich Village in New York City.

Many IJA members saw the FKB perform at the convention in Eugene, OR, two years ago. Their current show has many of the same routines we all enjoyed then--the Irish chant while bounce passing balls off a pair of drums, a routine of steals while verbally sparring in a game of questions, passing six sickles, a cigar box routine to com-pah band accompani­ment, passing and eating apples and the club passing "disciplines" leading up to their routine called "Jazz" - the fun Kara­mazov feed based on the premise that it doesn't matter how you get there if you don't know where you're going.

The FKB act continues to emphasize verbal humor and the theatrical as much as juggling, including a couple of non­juggling routines. It's all well done, and usually very funny.

One routine added since I last saw the group was a challenge from Ivan to the audience that he can juggle for ten throws any three items the audience can throw on stage. He gets a standing ovation if he wins and a pie in the face if he loses.

He gets three tries. and there 'are some size and weight constraints. The night I saw the show, the audience provided some particularly raunchy objects, but Ivan rose to the challenge with much hilarity along the way.

At "The Other End," the FKB show was broken by an intermission. It seemed to me that this broke the pace of the performance, and the post-intermission part of the program was less intense than the pre-intermission portion. In any case, the show concluded with the "Terror Trick," where they passed a flaming torch, a ukulele, a tomahawk, a meat cleaver, a sickle, a fish, an egg, a skillet and a bottle of cham­pagne with the wire removed from the stopper.

"The Nuclear Game"

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