“WHAT the hell was that?” exclaimed the man sitting next to me as a 30-second theatrical snowstorm blasted the stage of the Theatre Royal in Sydney to the sounds of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana”.

What indeed? Actually, it was the finale of the celebrated Russian clown phenomenon, “Slava’s Snowshow”, and theatre staff were enjoying the prospect of two weeks without vacuuming the floors, since the paper snow is allowed to build up throughout the season.

It’ll be more of the same when the company arrives at Canberra Theatre in early July.

Slava Polunin, frequently praised as “the best clown in the world”, was enjoying the fruits of his labours back at home in St Petersburg while his company got on with the job.

Created in 1993, his show has played to audiences in more than 30 countries, combining traditional and contemporary clowning, low-tech yet astonishing visual effects and the knack of connecting with audiences to take the art of clowning out of circus and into the theatrical milieu.

A fantasy experience capable of catapulting the worst of sceptics into a world of fantasy, it has clowns singing age-old songs to tiny concertinas as they’re engulfed by bubbles, clowns moving so slowly that you slow down too and a clown making love to a hatstand. Later the auditorium is entrapped in spider-webs and assaulted with balloons – nobody wants to go home.

In Sydney, I chat with Robert Saralp, one of the two chief clowns, dressed respectively in yellow and green, alternating night by night. A Moscow-trained actor who hails from the Circassian region by the Black Sea, he makes a throat-cutting gesture – “Imagine doing the same thing eight shows a week!”

Slava hired him 15 years ago and he’s worked his way to the top through the hierarchy of clowning, an art form he says is “emotionally more than stressful”.

Clowning, stressful? Saralp explains that you can’t hide behind your character in the normal way, yet the minimalism and “the characteristics of the play itself” help balance that stress.

There are joyous moments too, moments that reveal how clowns engage with people.

Touring to Singapore in 2000, Saralp and the clowns gave a young Singaporean man the microphone to propose to his girlfriend onstage. In 2012, a man arrived backstage with his wife, two children and a photograph, to ask if any of the same clowns were still in the show.

“I said: ‘Yes, and I recognise you as well’,” Saralp replied.

Only a consummate actor has a memory like that.

“Slava’s Snowshow”, Canberra Theatre, July 3-7, bookings to 6275 2700 or canberratheatrecentre.com.au