The Passing Zone

THE PASSING ZONE

The McPherson Opera House

McPherson, KS

© Lydia Lowe 10/19/2012

The Passing Zone . . . what do you get when you mix in one part comedy, one part athletic ability, one part skill, one part magic, and one part showmanship?  Well, you get a lot of parts known as The Passing Zone.  Whether you classify this juggling team of Owen Morse and Josh Casey as comedy or circus act, you're right.

The running comedy themes throughout the show are hilarious and worth going to see on their own.  But when you add in the juggling, the sheer timing and athletic ability that it takes to pull off a lot of their stunts; everything from juggling fire torches while balancing precariously on unicycles and on boards set on top of a ten pound drum laying on its side, to chainsaws weighing several pounds that are actually running at the time, to audience members wearing flaming hats while holding spinning plates as knives are thrown back and forth around them; the timing has to be perfect.  And this juggling team makes it seem so easy, when you've got to know that these juggling stunts require amazing amounts of practice time.

Then there's the site gags.  The bowling ball to the face that turns out to be a regular rubber ball, the two dozen eggs carefully balanced in the air on a plank of wood that intentionally falls out of the their cartons onto the audience in the front row but are really ping pong balls, as well as a variety of other gags.  You'll have to go to the show to see the rest.  No wonder they were finalists on America's Got Talent.

The Passing Zone is definitely worth the price of admission.  If you didn't see the show at The McPherson Opera House, you  missed a lot.  Don't let this happen again.  Check out their website on the links page to see some of their act, and then find one of their shows and go to it.  You won't be sorry.