“Slava’s Snowshow� v. Dodger Stadium

As someone who has always been more a baseball fan than a connoisseur of Russian clowns, Your Mayor would never have imagined that “Slava’s Snowshow� at UCLA Live, easily the holiday season’s must-see family event (See the Daily News story here, and pony up for orchestra seats – if you’re in the balcony, you’ll miss out on most of the fun), would utterly and delightfully subvert the Dodger Stadium experience, particularly when it comes to the ubiquitous beach balls in the stands.

But more on that later. “Slava’s Snowshow� is the brainchild of Slava Polunin, whose biography insists he grew up in Novosil, far outside Moscow, and so small the circus never came to town. He fell in love with what would eventually become his calling by watching Charlie Chaplin movies on TV.

Like Chaplin’s work, “Snowshow� is an intricately choreographed performance. It’s not exactly a gutbuster; a lot of it is even a tad melancholy. The funniest bit involves Polunin, or whoever’s wearing the hazmat-like yellow costume any given evening – the stage smoke does sort of smell like it may have been imported from Chernobyl – hanging a coat on a coatrack and then getting oddly cozy with it. And the full battalion of the cast’s clowns opens the second act leaping through the seats (literally) of Royce Hall gleefully spraying water on patrons.

But the show has become justly famous for the spectacular blizzard that closes the evening. As a blinding lightbank erupts, an astonishing spray of confetti is blasted into the audience, reaching to the very back of the auditorium. (They don’t bother to clean up after each performance – though they might tonight, just to appease Woody Allen’s Dixieland ensemble’s appearance on Saturday – so by the time the show closes Jan. 7, ticketholders may find themselves wading through “snow� shindeep.) It’s pretty much unlike anything you’ve ever experienced in a theater (but makes you glad pay-cable’s Spice Channel doesn’t offer a similar feature), and its very audacity can’t help but put a goofy grin on your face.

And still: Slava and crew aren’t done with you. They boot a bunch of beach balls into the crowd – many of them regulation-size, but eight or so with massive diameters measuring between 8 and 20 feet – and the audience reverts to its childhood, frenziedly batting the things about Royce Hall.

Oh, and so that’s where the Dodger Stadium comparison comes in. Any beach ball introduced into the crowd during a Dodgers game is hunted down by stadium ushers like English Pointers after quail; the edict is clear: You’ll have fun on our terms, or have no fun at all. At “Snowshow,� Slava and company happily invite the anarchy, and on a grand scale. Much of the audience hung around for 20 minutes or more for the opportunity to punch these gigantic orbs skyward and/or fill their cell phones with images of the spectacle.

Ironically, this bit of childlike fun is adults-only: Ushers raced up and down Royce’s aisles, advising parents to take their kids off their shoulders while those big balls arc’d through the air. Because while they may float gracefully over the crowd, they’re a lot heavier than they look when they come down. Heavier than the rest of the show, at least. “Slava’s Snowshow� has been touring the world since the early ’90s: It was “interactive media� practically before the term was even invented.