SEATTLE — The brothers are back! For the first time in seven years, The Flying Karamazov Brothers are playing Seattle, this time with a new cast and a new twist. And they actually fly.
"Even though we've done the show in the past? The way we've redone it, it's a new thing," says Paul Magid, the lone original Brother in this new incarnation. "And also working with the NANDA boys, it's really a completely different thing altogether. A different animal."
He's referring to a performance troupe out of Port Townsend that call themselves part Ninjas, part acrobats, part jugglers. Magid's lived in Port Townsend since the 1980's. "I mean I have known these guys for so long, their whole lives mostly. And we're all kind of a community and a family really."
The new version of the Karamazov classic "Club Sandwich" incorporates some of the acrobatic talents of NANDA, along with juggling of course "Club Sandwich is a club for juggling millionaires" who travel all the way to Egypt in search of the juggling clubs that juggle themselves.
NANDA's Tomoki Sage plays a millionaire, a cop and "The Fatman." He grew up watching the Karamazovs and can hardly believe he is one. "I would have never guessed this would happen," he says.
He and Magid prove it is possible to juggle, dance, sing, play the marimba and the harmonica...and chew gum at the same time. Sage says the act was intimidating. "There is no way I'm ever going to get this like you feel that way. It's like flexing a muscle that doesn't exist? You're like I'm never going to get it. Then you practice ridiculous amounts and somehow it all comes together."
The audience gets to join the fun by tossing three random items on stage that Sage then juggles, a Karamazov signature known as "The Gamble." "You just can't believe the ingenuity and also the wicked humor of some people," says Magid. He then compliments Sage. "You're really good at it." Sage is not so sure. "The more you talk about it the more nervous I get. And now I know why you decided you're not going to do it anymore."
Magid says the best part is the show's for everybody, sophisticated at times, not so much at others. "Kind of the Karamazov brand, it's completely idiotic and yet it's unbelievably difficult and skillful."
"Club Sandwich" opened last week and runs through October 6 at Broadway Performance Hall on Capitol Hill.
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