The New Victory schedule is always plump with circus acts – a little anarchy and juggling goes a long way with their young audience. But the current clown-show-in-residence, Jamie Adkins’s “Typo,” distinguishes itself even among their red-nosed pack. This graceful hour onstage avoids the hysteria you often find with a show aimed at children. Striking a tricky balance, both on his tiny bicycle and between innocence and elegance, Mr. Adkins has actually fulfilled the promise of ringleaders everywhere. It’s a “show for all ages.”

New York clown afficionados have grown accustomed to larger permutations of the act, from the swarming chorus of “Snowshow” to the expensive laughs at a Cirque du Soleil show. Mr. Adkins does just as much with next-to-nothing. Trained and inspired by street performance and busking, Mr. Adkins gets down to some very charming basics.

Mixing a sweetly bashful air with the usual tricks, Mr. Adkins’s show seems full of his failures: He can’t come up with an idea for a new piece, he’s littered his crumpled drafts something awful, and simply fixing a light bulb leaves him dangling in midair.

Mr. Adkins’s squeaking cheer in the face of disaster, though, makes him an excellent hero. His partner in adversity, Anne-Marie Levasseur, seems far more flappable, letting her musical accompaniment duties distract her from, say, a life-saving duty at hand. When she wanders off with the ladder Mr. Adkins needs, she does, at least, provide his panic with some marvelous underscoring.

While Ms. Levasseur giggles in French, plays the accordion, the piano, and a bongo, Mr. Adkins mostly just pipes “It’s okay!” and giggles nervously. He’s a lesson in resilience: When an act with a fork and a meatball gets sidelined by his peckishness, he moves briskly on to juggling. A piece of paper he tries to throw away turns into a ball, so he gamely bounces it around with its fellows for a while. Again, it’s a supremely graceful routine that makes use of what seem like mistakes.

Mr. Adkins’s approach delicately balances between the two extremes. He makes much of his fallibility, seeming to fall off his slack-rope into a prolonged flip or letting his unicycle crash conveniently into a waiting trunk. But throughout, “Typo” hits its keys very lightly, with a bright and delightful refusal to oversell. A costume change late in the show tips its hat (literally) to the ghost of Buster Keaton. He would be happy to have an heir who hasn’t forgotten how gently a house can fall on a guy.

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Jean Genet wrote “The Maids” in the 1940s with three female roles: sisters Solange and Claire, and their mistress Madame. But with a little interference from Sartre, a host of directors through the decades have cast men in the maids’ roles, and director Michele Chivu continues the tradition. Genet’s fable of two homicidal girls who like to play dress-up while their employer is away gets a handsome production at The Chocolate Factory, designed by Adrian Jones and Thomas Dunn.

Ax Norman does a nice job with masochistic Solange, the sister who plays the maid in the siblings’ dangerous little power-plays. Nate Rubin’s Claire isn’t quite so assured; his performance has more coy twitches and affected sing-song than his partner’s. But for Claire, the maid whose imitation of Madame may even include her death, a heightened performance may actually be appropriate.

Having sliced away every textual evidence of meta-theatricality (the show runs only an hour and a quarter), Ms. Chivu keeps our focus on the “girls” and their ritualistic violence. But though she has them practically at our feet, she can’t make their struggles sufficiently terrifying.

“Typo” until April 3 (209 W. 42nd Street, at Seventh Avenue,212-239-6200).

“The Maids” until April 9 (5-49 49th Avenue, Long Island City, 718-482-7069).