Japanese Rain Goggles

The New Victory Theater’s latest production works hard to recreate the era of top-hatted gents and flapper girls, but it made me think of the 1960s, and not just because the villain quotes Timothy Leary. The actors playing the heroes can outjuggle, outdance and outbalance any of the energetic acts that used to drive “The Ed Sullivan Show” in its heyday. If Sullivan were still on the air, these guys would probably have a permanent home.

Right now they inhabit Times Square, where their troupe, the Handsome Little Devils, is presenting “Squirm Burpee Circus: A Vaudevillian Melodrama.” Striving for the style of old-time entertainments in which mustache-twirling evil men tied damsels to railroad tracks, the show, directed by Armitage Shanks, unfolds at a circus featuring the brothers Mike the Handsome (Michael Huling) and Dashing Dave (Dave Clay). They don’t realize that their new assistant, the Lovely Little Lolo (Cole Schneider), is really the girl who once abandoned Mike at the altar (actually the swing set).

The story’s narrator and the brothers’ nemesis, the Baron Vegan von Hamburger (Jason Knauf, above), also traces his torment to playground days. Enlisting the audience’s help — children can do their best crazed “Wah-ha-ha-ha-ha,” and one young theatergoer even gets to go onstage as, yes, Hamburger Helper — he invents ways to annihilate the circus. While he plots, the brothers keep a lot of balls, not to mention clubs, plates and hats, in the air.

In one scene Dashing Dave plucks a woman from the audience to help him with Dave’s Ladder of Love. (It only sounds pornographic.) Arms extended, she holds a ladder before her while Dave, his back to her, climbs it. Inevitably he reaches a point where his posterior is directly above her nose. Be warned: this is the height to which the show’s humor usually rises. Children may find that level hilarious, but anyone over 12 will be far more impressed with the feats than with the flatulence jokes.

The Baron doesn’t execute any tricks, but makes up for it with wild-eyed enthusiasms and steampunk stratagems. He may not destroy the circus, but he comes close to stealing the show.

Japanese Rain Goggles