Veteran Clown Slava Polunin has certainly learned one thing in his years as a performer: No matter what else you do, save your best for last. While Slava’s Snow Show is almost all prelude to one glorious ridiculous effect, it’s ultimately worth it.

At the beginning of the show, a loud chord fills the auditorium, dry ice spills out, and a red light shines down. But instead of an ’80s rock band taking the stage, on comes a shabby-looking clown with high yellow trousers and a cylindrical red nose. As bizarre as this first moment of inappropriate bombast is, it sets the tone for much of what is to follow. It’s as if one of your favorite uncles, the one you thought was hilarious when you were 6 or 7 but now you find a little tiresome, rented the stage of the Moore and a full technical crew for an evening of his favorite shticks. We get Slava doing silly walks, Slava doing this funny dance where his butt wiggles, and Slava arguing wordlessly with his clown stooge, Onofrio Colucci—a squat fellow whose hat has ear flaps that extend 3 feet out from his head.

Slava’s Snow Show

Moore Theater, February 9-14

Some of these sketches use elaborate props, such as a bed that floats onto the stage like a boat and a top hat that becomes the smokestack of a locomotive. Occasionally they’re funny, but almost all strangely dwindle away at the end. Anytime Slava leaves the stage to climb over spectators or run up and down the aisles, they are generally delighted, but even their generous applause seems vaguely disappointed.

Then, as the first notes of Carmina Burana swell, the mood grows strangely sinister. Scraps of white tissue of the kind that already cover the floor of the theater begin to float gently down from the ceiling; the flats onstage ripple like a curtain, then reverse to reveal bleached backs. Slava starts to exit one way, then another, then, as the music swells, he and the audience are suddenly caught in a full-fledged snowstorm of white paper. It’s as stunning and thrilling as being caught in a blizzard on a rollercoaster.

It left me breathless. In its aftermath, the audience, its trust restored, giggled and played like kids in a snowball fight.