Something New Is in the Air for the Karamazovs

In his end was his beginning.

True story: Joseph Pujol, a simple baker from Marseilles, achieved fame and fortune in turn-of-the-century France for a curious skill. Passing wind--without odor, on cue and on pitch.

He attached a long tube to his rear, like a tail, and through it played “Au Clair de la Lune” on a penny whistle. He smoked cigarettes through the tube. Without the tube, he could extinguish a candle from a foot away and imitate what he felt would be the farts of a puppy, thunder, a bricklayer and a nun.

Pujol inspired laughter. He inspired imitation. He inspired Mel Brooks, who named a character in the film “Blazing Saddles” after him: Gov. Lepetomane, played by Mel Brooks. And now he has inspired a play by the Flying Karamazov Brothers.

“Le Petomane” will have its world premiere Sunday at the La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Forum.

In the course of this play, told from the fictionalized perspective of Pujol’s 101-year-old son, the Karamazov Brothers will re-create Pujol’s act in its entirety--with one subtle difference.

They plan to have their Le Petomane use his tube and penny whistle to play one of the voices from the sextet in the opera “Lucia di Lammermoor” instead of “Au Clair de la Lune.” Le Petomane will also sing a second part, while the three other Karamazovs fill in the third, fourth and fifth parts. The sixth part will be left to the imagination.

The Flying Karamazov Brothers who, as they like to say, don’t fly, aren’t named Karamazov and aren’t brothers--at least not to each other--are four very funny fellows famous for their juggling, jokes and other highly theatrical stage antics.

Two of them are original members of the troupe founded in 1973: tall, thin, long-haired fellow UC Santa Cruz graduates (and college co-valedictorians) Howard Patterson, who will play Le Petomane and Le Petomane’s son, and Paul David Magid, who has written the script from a concept developed by the troupe and its director, Robert Woodruff.

Samuel Ross Williams, a jolly-looking one-time comic-book store owner whom the pair discovered juggling and puppeteering in Washington state, joined the group in 1980. And fresh-faced Michael Preston joined in April, replacing Randy Nelson, who left because his back wasn’t up to the challenge of this show.

And this show does pose some challenges.

First, the four men make up the show’s entire cast--its live cast that is. They become not only individual characters, but also audition with dance hall acts in theaters where Le Petomane performs. They’ve also created a “documentary” movie to go along with the action, which features cameos by their children, wives and neighbors.

Then there’s that little matter of re-creating Le Petomane’s act. Unsure at first which one of them would take on that daunting role, it fell to Patterson after they all agreed that he was the most “dignified.”

Reproducing those exquisitely controlled emissions has required a great deal of rehearsal, Patterson acknowledged. A great deal of abdominal exercise involving sit-ups and the lifting of 10-pound weights with his stomach muscles. A great deal of practicing.

But the greatest challenge of the role for Patterson has been bringing himself to tell his parents just what part he is playing in the show--something he had not yet done late last week.

“My parents,” the one-time biology major explained with a sigh, “are still waiting for me to go to grad school.”

Patterson, it seems, has had his difficulties in the past explaining to his folks just why he does the things he does. Interestingly, there are some semi-serious rifts in this “explosive” material that reflect this. Louis Pujol, as the Karamazovs have envisioned him, goes through a transformation in the way he thinks about his father. Louis starts off ashamed of his father, and doesn’t really begin to appreciate him until he becomes old.

The Karamazovs would like to get more respect, as well.

“When you tell someone you’re a juggler, they think you’re one step above a rat,” Magid said. “You juggle, and they say, ‘Is that all you do?’ They dismiss you. The same thing happened with Pujol. When he farted, he did it with such skill and tonality that he also was serious about it. He considered himself an artist. He wasn’t a freak. He was a genius. We relate to what he had to go through all his life.”

At the same time, Magid is very conscious that Le Petomane’s talent is not exactly high-brow.

“Our regular show appeals to just about everyone. It will be interesting to see how people react to someone farting on stage,” he said.

They’ve already done a segment from the show for some of the board members of the La Jolla Playhouse, which evidently went over well. And Patterson met privately with playhouse mega-benefactor Mandell Weiss (for whom both playhouse theaters are named). Since Weiss is 101 and Patterson is going to play a 101-year-old, Patterson thought he could get some tips.

“But, when I met him, (Weiss) said, ‘But you’ll have to play an ordinary 101-year-old. I’m not an ordinary 101-year-old,’ ” Patterson recalled with a laugh. Patterson liked the line so much, he worked it into the script.

The Karamazov Brothers began working on the project with Woodruff in September. They have invested heavily in this show, which they intend to tour after the playhouse run, with an eye on New York. They’ve already played Broadway three times, with two productions of “Juggling and Cheap Theatrics”--at the Ritz Theatre in 1983 and at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center in 1986--and in their own adaptation of “The Comedy of Errors,” at the Vivian Beaumont in 1987.

They have also performed in “The Three Moscowteers” at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and “L’Histoire du Soldat” at New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival in 1986. They describe “Le Petomane” as the most fully developed story they have done.

They’ve come a long way since they began juggling on the streets of Santa Cruz and San Francisco.

Early on each performer picked a Karamazov stage name from the Dostoevsky novel. Magid, 38, (Dmitri) is a Seattle native who has returned to Port Townsend, Wash., just outside Seattle area to live. Patterson, 36, (Ivan) was born in Los Angeles and now also lives in Port Townsend. Williams, 38, (Smerdyakov) is also a native of Seattle. And Preston, 34, (Rakatin--a friend of Alyosha’s from the monastery) was born in Granville, Ohio, and now lives in Hoboken, N.J. (Timothy Furst, a former member, was Fyodor. And Randy Nelson, another former member, was Alyosha.)

The group became famous first for its juggling skills-- Patterson challenged audiences to bring him anything smaller than a breadbox to juggle 10 times. And he has kept some amazing objects aloft over the years: a hunk of watermelon, a plate of Jell-O, a bowling ball, a newspaper, a dead fish. Whenever he failed to keep the objects going for the promised number of rounds, he got a cream pie in his face. He got quite a few of those over the years.

They also made lots of puns--and some outright groaners. Yes, they’re the guys who said:

“You ain’t seen nothing, nyet .”

“I don’t have to take this kind of abuse; I’m an artist--I can get whatever abuse I want.”

And they created that marvelous moment when Dmitri holds up a boomerang, wonders what it is and says, “Mmmm . . . it’ll come back to me.”

Their act and its swift exchanges, like the juggling itself, take teamwork. One sees it even in the interview room.

“There’s methane in our madness,” Magid said at one point, and as the others laughed, Patterson whipped out a notebook to jot the comment down.

Don’t be surprised if you hear it in the show.

* Performances of “Le Petomane” are at 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday and 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday through July 12. Opens Sunday. Tickets are $23.75-$29.75. At the La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Forum on the UC San Diego campus. Call 534-6760.