It's the height of midsummer, a wonderfully balmy day, and the railway station at Marne La Vallee Chessy is thronging with eager families en route to Disneyland Paris.

Our small group is resolutely heading in the opposite direction -- to a much more magical place, the Moulin Jaune or, as I come to think of it, Slava-land, home to Slava Polunin, the peerless Russian clown whose long-running Snowshow has already delighted countless thousands worldwide. It returns briefly to Glasgow next week, and Edinburgh the week after.

A short drive from the station takes us off the routine track. At the bottom of a pebbled lane, behind carved gates and a sign that says: “Beware, dreams come true” lies a garden of inspirational delights. Not just a mix of wilderness woodland and flowerbeds, but -- so Slava’s wife Elena explains as we wander through whimsical archways and along a red slatted walkway -- the beginnings of an open-air museum about nomads. Already there’s a brightly painted gypsy caravan, a cosy yurt where the interior is a jewel-box of ornate fabrics on wall, floor and furnishings, and various merry huts and hammocks that speak of impromptu refuges, relaxing retreats and above all hospitality. Indeed, when the house overflows with guests, these “exhibits” are prepared to welcome visitors in comfort and privacy. Meals, however, are more a matter of sharing -- and feasting on a generous scale is a Slava-land speciality.

Food had, in fact, been a savoury precursor to our stroll, served outside, on a long mirror-topped table underneath a maturely expansive tree. Nestling in its branches -- a crafty chandelier -- old glasses, too chipped to drink from, now dangled on wires, recycled as candle-holders. Everywhere you look -- in the nine acres of land or in the house, a converted and extended 12th-century mill on the banks of the River Marne -- you see the same flair for lateral thinking. In a way it’s a reflection of the housewifely thrift Elena grew up with in her native Russia. But as you drink in the quirky details -- wondering “why didn’t I think of that?” when you realise the coat hook on a wall is actually the knobbed lid of a broken sugar bowl -- you come to recognise the element of imagination that lies at the heart of Slava’s clowning.

In Snowshow, it’s the art of transformation that catches audiences of all ages unawares. Not just Slava’s own consummate ability to droop from naive glee into dejected gloom, potently affecting though that is. But the sudden, magical surprise of a bed that becomes a boat -- or the tiny piece of paper that whirls into a snowstorm that engulfs us all in a flurry of happy wonderment. As each room in the house reveals its own witty variations on this theme of reinvented usefulness, the concept of Moulin Jaune as a laboratory becomes a reality.

Those who come here to join Slava in his Academy of Fools will only fetch up on-stage in one of his shows if they can demonstrate a similar zest for finding fresh possibilities in the stuff of everyday life. If they too can look at a coatstand and see a person -- then make others see that person too -- then they may well find themselves, of a summer evening, joining Slava in his Ship of Fools, feasting under the moon and conjuring up new material for a future date.

Slava, top-to-toe in his favourite vibrant yellow, joins Elena and myself as we approach this Ship of Fools. Like so much that enhances Moulin Jaune, this wreck of a boat was spotted and salvaged when the company were on tour. Home again, looking at the grotty wooden hull, Slava’s thoughts went topsy-turvy. Stripped of weed and barnacles, varnished and upended, the keel is now the roof of what Slava fondly thinks of as akin “to one of the typical English pubs where there are flowers hanging in baskets, trestle tables, benches … and good beer, music, food”. But probably not feasting in quite the manner that takes place here -- especially when the neighbouring village is invited in to take part in the revels.

Ten years ago, when Slava, Elena and their three children had been following a fairly nomadic existence across Europe and beyond, the yen for a place to put down roots brought them to the dilapidated Moulin Jaune. It’s fair to say that at first their plans to renovate the historic building didn’t find universal favour with the locals. So perhaps the “open door” feasts started off as an exercise in building bridges, reassuring folk that the moulin and its milieu were cherished, sought after not as some EuroSlava theme park but as an oasis where the Polunins could get back to the nature that Slava found restorative and inspiring.

Now, the feasts are part of the year’s fabric. “I think of them like a medieval carnival -- something that I also like to bring into our laboratory,” says Slava, a beaming mine host at the top of a table, surveying the washing lines that stretch -- a rainbow of coloured clothes -- into the trees and a relic of recent jollifications. Each line holds a different colour, and he explains that each table too was colour-coded. “Everyone wore a certain colour, sat at the same colour of table -- and ate food that was that same colour too. And it was fun for them, fun for me -- I love to see happy faces, hear people laughing, enjoying something simple that lets them play and not worry.”

And yet, his own performance is perhaps at its most powerful and most memorable when his clown persona is visibly tinged with sadness -- the very nuances of his quiet despair leading many observers to talk in soulful terms of Becket. He nods. “I tend to joke less and less. To not be funny but to be odd. To be strange and, yes, melancholy. This is probably related to the Russian soul -- but it did not exist within the Russian tradition of clowning until one man: Leonid Engibarov [who died, aged 37, in 1972]. He ended his sketches with three dots, as it were. With no funny ending, just … And I liked that melancholy streak very much. It reflects the inner emotions of men. It makes laughter and joy very precious.”

 

Family clearly is also very precious. The Moulin Jaune is home not just to him and Elena, but two of their sons, a daughter-in-law and two young grand-daughters. Everyone, it seems, chips in to the ongoing business of touring and performing. Elena masterminds costumes, the sons contribute to the design and technical direction while the children -- surrounded by so many unusual objects indoors and out -- make up their own performances that inevitably draw Slava into play. The weather, of course, has famously stirred his imagination.

“The most beautiful weather is snow,” he smiles. “It seems as if the earth dresses up in a bridal gown. Or a poet is pulling a sheet of white paper to him, in the moment before he writes in amazement. When snowflakes fall on the mud, all the mud disappears from our lives. A snow-covered world …” He breathes out in soft contentment. Then adds: “In Russia they now call me The Snowman. Last year, I was 60. In months it was 720 -- so we put 720 snowmen all around the theatre where I was working. And all of Moscow helped me build them. Look …”

And he opens a book, finds the pictures of this spectacular frozen tribute. Rows and rows of snowmen: little ones, large ones, all lovingly different and all circling the theatre -- and Slava -- like a huge hug. Elena tells me people do wait on, after Snowshow, in hopes of a hug from the man himself. I can, as it happens, vouch for the splendid bear-like quality of a heartening Slava embrace. It’s time to go, and the sheer generosity of the day -- the unpretentious welcome that has opened doors on bedrooms, cupboards, office and kitchen and playroom to a stranger’s greedy gaze -- is leaving me fumbling for adequate thank-yous. Slava, however, would have us all believe the pleasure is all his. “I have the greatest gift destiny could ever give me,” he says. “To see thousands of happy faces every evening. And then to carry that joy back here, to where I can live, breathe, with the rhythms of nature all around.”

Slava’s Snowshow is at King’s Theatre, Glasgow, October 11-15, and Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre, October 18-22.