Theater review of 'Separated at Birth' at Mead Theatre Lab

It is always troubling when you arrive at a play and are asked if you're wearing "shoes you can walk in." There is a momentary terror: Is this performance art? Will we be asked to run? But while "Separated at Birth," which plays through Aug. 29 at Flashpoint's Mead Theatre Lab, is an active theatergoing experience, it's hardly strenuous.

It doesn't matter if there's a bad seat in the (very small) house, since wherever you aren't you won't be sitting there for long. Every few minutes, a Metro chime sounds and everyone grabs their belongings and finds a new seat. The set is a fairly accurate simulacrum of a Metro station -- in fact, an audience member wondered aloud if the Metro bench had been stolen from a station before touching it to discover that it was made of wood. Think about it, buddy: How would they sneak it through those little gates, anyway?

"Separated at Birth," produced by Dog & Pony D.C., is a clown show that sends its characters into the depths of the Metro to find the humor in the quotidian interactions we all get into down there. The clowns are neither the bewigged bozos who gave you nightmares as a child nor the bemasked Italian Harlequins that gave you nightmares as a college student, but instead red-nosed, wordless caricatures that embody certain Metro tropes like Guy From Baltimore Who Hits on All the Ladies (Jon Reynolds) or Uptight Intern With a Laugh Like a Fire Alarm (Micael Bogar) or Tourist Who Apparently Has Never Before Seen a Map (Lenore Sack). It's tied together by an Amelie-like figure (Rachel Grossman) who draws the other characters into enjoying silly everyday Metro happenings: reading over someone's shoulder, surreptitiously sneaking a bite of food, making eyes at a stranger, giving directions.

The performance is well paced and manages (most of the time) to hit the whimsical tone it's aiming for without veering into twee. Occasionally the audience gets tired of the joke before the clowns do -- after all, they're meant to have a childlike demeanor, which for most children means laughing at the same thing over and over again until they very suddenly fall asleep -- but at some point during the 70-minute performance, you stop questioning their attitudes. Is there any point, after all, in asking why one clown is intent on getting the other to take a nap in the Metro? She's a clown. He's a clown. Who knows why they do anything? Why did Harpo Marx want two hard-boiled eggs? Why did the chicken cross the road? It's best not to think about it too much, or you might start questioning the red noses.

Zublin is a writer and editor for the Washington Post Express.

Separated at Birth

Devised by Wyckham Avery and Lorraine Ressegger; directors, Colin Hovde, Nicole Jost and Jessica Lefkow; production design, Hannah J. Crowell and Andrew Cissna; costumes, Ivania Stack. With Micael Bogar, Rachel Grossman, Monique Holt, Brenden McDougal, Wendy Nogales, Jon Reynolds and Lenore Sack. Through Aug. 29 at Mead Theatre Lab at Flashpoint, 916 G St. NW. Visit http://dogandponydc.com or http://flashpointdc.org.