Here's what I love about the Moisture Festival: Where else in Seattle can you go to a Saturday matinee and see audience members in fluorescent-hued feather boas and kids sporting their favorite costumes?
It's a show full of freewheeling, old-timey, vaudeville-esque fun, replete with groan-inducing jokes by an emcee in black tails, straw hat and with a waxed moustache. (To wit, a sample: "What do you call a joke-cracking dinosaur?" "A thesaurus." Or, "Broken pencils are pointless." "I got a job at a bakery because I needed dough." You get the idea.)
Dubbed the world's largest comedy/varietè festival, the Moisture Festival runs four weeks each spring, bringing aerialists, jugglers, comedians, dancers, rope acts, bubble acts, clowns, acrobats, can-can girls, strong women, strong men, tap dancers, drill teams, musical numbers – "the weird and the wonderful." As a parent, I find it immensely refreshing to bring my kids to a show that celebrates human-scale creativity and humor over technological whiz-bang.
You can go more than once to the festival and see an entirely (or at least mostly) different show – more than 100 acts and 200 performers rotate through the line-up. Click on the performance date on the festival website to see the specifics of who's performing in a given show. Each show features between eight and ten acts.
At the matinee we attended, my 8- and 11-year-olds were awestruck over bubble man Louis Pearl, who crafted a fog-filled spinning "carousel" of bubbles atop a young audience volunteer's head (never mind the ginormous "hug bubble" completely enveloping two kids). Kellin Quinn, who adopts the persona of a nerdy, insecure juggler, prompted serious guffaws.
I thought my kids' eyes would bug out watching acrobat Charly Castors, playing Vincent Van Gogh in his Arles studio, juggling in succession a rolled-up carpet, a table and a bed (!) with his feet (tossing out a rubber ear into the audience at the end, natch). And Godfrey Daniels, who must be the sweetest, most charmingly low-key clown I've ever seen (one reviewer calls him "a Shel Silverstein poem brought to life"). He manages to wring belly laughs from the audience with nothing more than a large red ball.
A few tips for your visit: Hale's Palladium's cavernous space can get chilly. It's open seating; doors open half an hour before show time. Shows run two hours with a brief intermission. Snacks (cash only) include $1 popcorn bags, soft pretzels and more substantial fare such as bratwurst. Hale's brews are on tap. Merch includes cute T-shirts and the wardrobe essential $3 foam clown nose.
IF YOU GO
Where: Hale’s Ales Palladium, 4301 Leary Way N.W., Seattle. (Note: Broadway Performance Hall at 1625 Broadway in Capitol Hill also hosts a 3 p.m. family-friendly comedy/varietè show on Sunday, March 30 and Sunday, April 6.)
When: Now through April 13. Family-friendly comedy/varietè shows at 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The 7:30 p.m. shows (Wednesdays through Sundays) are geared to all ages, but may not be considered “family friendly” to some.
Admission: Adults $20, children 12 and younger $10; tickets at the door or online.
Contact: www.moisturefestival.com; 206-297-1405.
Lynn Schnaiberg is a Seattle-based freelance writer who has written for publications such as Outside and Hemispheres magazines.
