Circus in London

Come Alive is a tricky one to review because the question here is less ‘is this a good example of a mash up of a circus and the songs from The Greatest Showman?’ and more ‘what the hell are the criteria for a good mash up of a circus and the songs from The Greatest Showman?’ Conceived and directed by Simon Hammerstein, the brains behind posh strip club The Box, Come Alive occupies a huge building in Earl’s Court dubbed the Empress Museum, formerly called the Daikin Centre and home to an immersive David Attenborough documentary.   The actual big top-style performance space is comparatively intimate: 700 seats is not tiny, but if an obvious point of comparison is Cirque du Soleil’s annual shows at the Royal Albert Hall, then Come Alive offers similarly skilled acrobats at appreciably closer range – you can see each muscle contort and flex. The rest of the building has been given over to a sort of Greatest Showman-themed mini-mall: overpriced food, overpriced drinks, overpriced fancy dress clobber - but done in high travelling-circus style and there’s a little bit of gratis pre-show acrobatics in one corner of it that’s well worth catching. Anyway. Circus. And the songs from The Greatest Showman. I think one basic point here is that presumably literally every person who has bought a ticket to Come Alive will love the Benj Pasek and Justin Paul tunes from the film already. They’re done well – performed live and with personality, but also very faithfully, ie no drastic sonic...

For many a middle class British family, there’s nothing more Christmassy than a seasonal trip to the ballet. Usually, it’s the only time they watch dance in the year, so they want something well known: Tchaikovsky, ideally. But anyone who casually grabs a ticket to Duck Pond, Aussie circus company Circa’s rebellious take on Swan Lake, expecting a classic retelling of the popular ballet will be left bewildered by this ugly duckling mash-up of a show. I mean that in a good way. Duck Pond, which premiered in Brisbane last summer, takes the best of Swan Lake, then twists it. The skill and control of the most classic ballet is on display, but sliced in between body-contorting acrobatics, heart-raising lifts, and even slapstick comedy. When the original score is played in Jethro Woodward’s score, it’s remixed with a heavy trap beat. At just 80 minutes in length, the show packs in material, and manages to be funny, scary, and even kinda kinky; one particularly tense moment sees the Black Swan (Kimberley Rossi) threaten to puncture the skin of a near-nude male performer as she steps on him in sharp red stilettos. Not your standard Christmas fare, but thoroughly entertaining.  With so many stunts on display, the plot to Duck Pond is somewhat secondary (although by no means an afterthought). We watch a sea of swans, identically dressed in shimmering black bodysuits that accentuate every sinewy muscle, every sharp rib beneath. They tumble in twos and threes, then coalesce for group...

This review is from 2019. ‘La Clique’ returns for Christmas 2023 with a new line-up. Leicester Square isn’t usually known as a visitor destination for Londoners. But when Underbelly pops up its much-loved Spiegeltent there, and throws in legendary cabaret show ‘La Clique’, it’s worth a punt to venture back to tourist central.  Practical tips first. Get to the show early as it’s unreserved seating. Also, avoid the front row unless you want to get drenched (more on this later). Buy a drink from the bar before you go in to find your seats: you’ll feel more in the spirit of the night with a glass of wine, I promise.  The show has all the elements of cabaret you might expect: a garish host with a poor German accent, a bit of striptease, some scantily clad acrobats and a dash of fire-blowing to boot. One highlight was Zoe Marshall, an aerialist who somehow hangs from the roof only by her hair and manages to make it look rather effortless. The performance by Jamie Swan, which is a sort of ‘Magic Mike’ on water affair involving an iron-cast bathtub, also brings some much-needed uniqueness to the line-up. Swan kicks a lot of his watery spectacular into the audience so unless you’re the type who really loves the water rides at Thorpe Park, it’s best to sit a bit further back.  Sadly, several of the other acts, as well as the singing throughout, didn’t deliver. They felt a little tired and passé compared to other shows of this type, though you can appreciate it’s a tough gig when...

The latest megabudget spectacle from Cirque du Soleil to hit these shores is 'Corteo', which takes inspiration from the lost world of Italian traditional circuses. It's set at the funeral of the clown Mauro, where acrobats swing from chandeliers and float from giant balloons, and sees Cirque du Soleil reverts to full nineteenth-century circus luxe, with harlequin outfits, stripey-tight-wearing tumblers and historical tricks galore. It’s already toured the UK in arena form, but now it settles into the Royal Albert Hall for the Quebec company’s traditional start-of-year stand at the iconic venue, which has been specially reconfigured for the companty to perform down the middle of the venue, with each side of the audience getting a different perspective on the action.