LONDON CITY NIGHTS

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Review: 'Little Death Club' at Underbelly Festival, 15th May 2019

Thursday, May 16, 2019 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Reviewed by David James

Rating: 

Sometimes all you need is fire, sex and alcohol. Bernie Dieter's Little Death Club provides all three in the form of a slick, stylish, satirical and salaciously wonderful 'kabarett' that delights with polished dangerousness.

The core of the show, is Dieter herself, looking every inch the distillation of Weimar style, as if she's wandered off the set of a particularly stylish silent movie. She behaves on stage as if she was born on one, sinuously prowling around on spike-studded heels in a feathered black bodysuit. It's equal parts sexy and scary, and if (to be honest, it's probably when) she turns her gaze to you it's like being frozen in the headlights of an oncoming 18-wheeler.

Though there's a warning on the door about fire being used in the show, the real danger comes as Dieter casts her gaze around the audience and finds unsuspecting men to single out and charm. Ordinarily, I'd say if you're shy and awkward stay away from the front row, but here even hiding in the back rows isn't necessarily a defence (as the guy who ended up with her crotch being ground in his face discovered).

For me, the thrill at being prey to a predatory performer is exciting, fun and has provided some of my favourite experiences in theatre over the years. So when I was inevitably singled out for during a song punctuated by yells of "EAT MY PUSSY!" I enjoyed the hell out of that adrenaline rush. 

But though this is very much Dieter's show, she's also the Professor X to a wonderfully weird collection of misfits. These include wonderfully gloomy mime Josh Glanc, who bemoans the lack of reality inherent to his art, wishing that one day the box he could escape from would be a real one. We enjoy Myra DuBois: "The Songbird of South Yorkshire", a classic drag queen who I don't think it's possible to not find funny.

Then there's an extraordinary fire show from Kitty Bang Bang. This begins promisingly, with two assistants quietly appearing near the front of the stage with blankets, presumably to put her out if she ignites. I've seen a whole bunch of fire performances before, but what she does here beyond my understanding. I know the basic rules of how these acts work - that heat and flame travel upward and so on. But fire is hot - there is no trick that makes fire not hot. So I have absolutely no idea how she manages to stand with flames flickering from her lips without burning herself. Maybe she really is a mutant?

Similarly mesmeric is Beau Sargent's contortion and acrobatics act. Sargeant has one of the most beautiful bodies I've seen on stage, his fat-free musculature making him appear as a streamlined art deco sculpture. There's a simmering sexual androgyny in the way he writhes and twists, eventually spinning high above us in precise whirls from a hoop. It's breathtaking stuff.

But my fave thing in the night was Fancy Chance's dream-like hair suspension act. I've seen a bunch of these before and while they're impressive, seeing someone simply gracefully enduring pain just isn't enough. But Fancy Chance provides that something else with an outright beautiful routine based around a flowing dress with wings. Here she swoops, glides and soars above the audience, the breeze created by her wings gently buffetting our faces. This is all soundtracked to a bass-heavy song that slaps extremely hard. It also has an incredible final flourish that I will not spoil here. When I look back on this show, I feel it'll be her act that lodges firmly in the mind.

Towards the end of the show we get a moment of insight and perspective. Dieter reminds us that the original Weimar cabaret (and indeed, the Weimar Republic itself) was squashed by the rise of fascists. She talks of the increasingly scary world beyond the confines of this tent - hinting that history may be repeating itself. 

But if the world really is ending, I can't think of any party I'd rather be at than this one. Little Death Club is one hell of an hour's entertainment - worth the price of admission many times over. 

Little Death Club is at Udderbelly Festival until 23 June.

Friday, January 25, 2019

Review: 'No Show' at the Soho Theatre, 24th January 2019

Friday, January 25, 2019 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Reviewed by David James
Rating: 

Life as a professional circus performer doesn't sound much fun. 

Learning the skills is intense, painful and (I'm guessing) expensive. Relying on your body for your livelihood means that you must constantly train and watch your diet. An injury can permanently scupper your career. The pay is variable and generally not great. Then there's the simple fact that the nature of what you're doing comes with a baked in age limit - and there are always younger, fitter, bendier, injury-free people entering the industry. On top of that, as we learn with No Show, the circus industry treats women really shittily.

So why do people do it? Is that gasp you get from an audience as you spiral gracefully through the air worth all the misery? Creator/director Ellie Dubois and performers Francesca Hyde, Kate McWilliam, Michelle Ross, Camille Toyer and Alice Gilmartin set out to deconstruct the traditional circus show, showing us the psychological and physical pressures behind the sequins and vaseline smiles.

In a way, the audience gets to have their cake and eat it. Not only do we get to see physical feats of strength, balance, flexibility and endurance, but we also learn about what's going on in the performer's mind as they do so.

Early on we get a statement of intent from the show in the form of a Cyr wheel routine from Camille Toyer. I've seen a bunch of these over the years and familiarity with this act has made me a little blase. Much of that was swept away here, as Kate McWilliam gives a running commentary on the potential injuries that can be caused: with the performer risking crushed fingers and toes, broken bones or a fractured skull. Explicitly outlining the physical dangers is a blunt way of cranking up the tension - but it works.

No Show really hits its stride when it gets into the way women are treated within the industry. McWilliam delivers a short speech outlining her career, explaining that while she prefers to do tumbling and gymnastics there is a constant pressure for women to do 'dainty and feminine' routines that emphasise their fragility.

Then you have Alice Gilmartin's repeated efforts to introduce herself to the audience - she generally only gets a few words in before the microphone is snatched from her hands and she's forced into a handstand on the canes. The other women provide a running commentary as she does so: criticising her poise, lack of engagement with the audience, make comments like "she's got her legs open as usual" and generally demean her. You realise that while it's all rictus grins on stage, there's an awful lot of misery going on in rehearsals.

As a show conceived and performed by women, No Show is something of an anomaly in the circus world. Generally, acrobatics and circus shows are mixed sex affairs, with beefy men launching skinny women high into the air. I'd unthinkingly accepted this as just the way things were, but Dubois and the performers gave me a lot to think about. 

It strikes me that (in much the same way as other corners of the entertainment industry) your professional career is at the mercy of powerful men with carte blanche to decide the nature of your routine. If that means you're being sent out in a skimpy Barbie-doll costume to grin and twirl before a leering audience, then that's the nature of the game honey, and you'd best get used to it if you know what's good for you.

Learning all this makes the most satisfying moment of the performance one of the most low key: the performers sit on the ground next to one another and silently eat a jam doughnut. It's a funny, dignified and weirdly moving protest, grabbing back a smidge of autonomy in an industry designed to stamp that out. 

No Show doesn't provide jaw-dropping stunts you can't see anywhere else, but it has a political dimension that no other circus show even attempts to provide. Check it out.

No Show is at the Soho Theatre until 9th February. Tickets here.

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Review: 'Circa: Peepshow' at the Underbelly, 3rd July 2018

Wednesday, July 4, 2018 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Reviewed by David James

Rating: 

Circa's new performance Peepshow is simultaneously modern and retro. On one hand, it's contemporary as hell: a show rippling with sexual tension to a pounding minimalist techno soundtrack. On the other it could be something you'd have seen in Weimar Berlin, self-consciously 'cheeky' acrobatic stripteases set to upbeat jazz.

This cocktail of old and new adds up to a pretty damn enjoyable hour of circus - a fresh jaw-dropping and gasp-inducing feat of skill, agility and strength reliably offered up about every three minutes or so.

The seven-strong cast (Ela Bartilmo, Jessica Connell, Jarred Dewey, Scott Grove, Luke Thomas, David Trappes and Billie Wilson-Coffey) each have their own speciality, ranging from Scott Grove, whose musculature strains like the rigging of a battleship, to the light as a feather  Ela Bartilmo, who's filled with an nervous electric energy that sends her jittering across the stage.

One of the things that makes reviewing circus so tricky is that the baseline of skill for even an average night of acrobatics is so high. It's easy to get a bit blase about people doing something as (relatively) straightforward as standing on each other's shoulders or weightlessly tumbling across the floor, forgetting the years of perspiration and dedication it took them to reach this point. But, sat in the front row, the performers often appearing in danger of careening into the audience and being perilously swung right over my head, you get a fantastic sense of their raw physical power and finesse.

It ends up distilled into an extraordinarily sexy hour of entertainment. Perhaps that's a bit obvious for something called Peepshow, but you'd be surprised how many circus and acrobatic performances do their best to pretend that super-fit men and women in skintight outfits writhing around on one another isn't sexy as hell.

But Circa leans into it with Peepshow - something you understand from the moment they troop on in sequined hotpants. The performance is peppered with intensely erotic moments, ranging from timelessly cheeky end-of-the-pier stuff like Jessica Connell's striptease (in which disembodied hands reach in from behind a shimmer curtain, raise her into the air and gradually undress her) to the nuclear-strength display of masculine beauty that Jarred Dewey delivers on the trapeze.

You know what? Jarred Dewey is so impressive in this show that he deserves his own paragraph. That's not to say that anyone else in the company isn't great, but he's got some intangible star quality that makes his solo performances magnetic. When he writhes about up in the air he looks inhumanly serpentine - like something you'd expect to see in an X-Men movie than on stage in front of your eyes. I'm like, not un-fit, but I'm vaguely in awe of the guy and seeing him made me make a mental promise to lift heavier weights more frequently and do a bit of yoga.

The only real low points are the hoop and juggling acts - criticisms I admit are entirely subjective on my part. I've seen a thousand hula-hoop acts over the years and they all seem fairly similar to one another. The one moment where the hoop performances become interesting is when one comes apart and swishes across the stage like a big plastic whip, having to be quickly exchanged for a more structurally sound hoop. And the juggling? Well, it's juggling. The most interesting part was when a dropped ball rolled over to me and I threw it back up onto the stage.

Wobbles aside, Peepshow is a supremely confident hour of circus that achieves its goals with style and ease. The performers manage to be both superhumanly talented and approachably charismatic. It sounds good, it looks great and you can sense the blood, sweat and tears that have been shed to make this all look so effortless.

Circa: Peepshow is at the Underbelly on the South Bank until August 27th. Tickets here.

Friday, February 2, 2018

Review: 'Becoming Shades' at Vault Festival, 1st February 2018

Friday, February 2, 2018 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Becoming Shades reviewed by David James
Rating:

The Vaults underneath Waterloo make for a great Hades. The arched ceilings, damp dripping down the walls and trains distantly overhead rumbling overhead do a lot of legwork in Chivaree Circus and Upstage Creative's Becoming Shades - in which the audience becomes lost souls amidst the hellhounds, pomegranate seeds and enigmatic boatmen of the Greek afterlife.

A loose retelling of the myth of Persephone, the show consists of various circus acts performed by an all-female company scattered around Vault Festival's biggest venue. So, we might huddle around a performer doing a piece of interpretative dance, then be hustled over to another part of the room where we take in an acrobatics act and so on. Impressively, this is all musically accompanied by a live duo, Sam West and Becks Johnstone, the latter of which is such a talented vocalist that it feels a bit odd to have your back to her whilst she performs.

The show bills itself as immersive theatre but, like most shows that claim this, it isn't. Instead, it's more of a promenade piece. Though we're poked and prodded by staff who make sure we're not blundering into the fire-eaters, this is an almost entirely passive experience in which we sit down, shut up and watch people do stuff. That the show isn't interactive isn't necessarily a criticism, but "immersive" is quickly becoming a meaningless marketing buzzword and I wish shows would stop diluting the concept.

Becoming Shades also claims to be a "female story of empowerment", which is also a bit debatable. On the face of it, the Persephone myth isn't particularly progressive: a woman abducted and forcibly married, who has little agency of her own within the story. Chivaree Circus zeroes in on the imagery of a busted open pomegranate as a symbol of female sexual power, eventually reincarnating Persephone as a Queenly fertility goddess in full command of her own sexuality (she then twirls around on a flaming yonic hula hoop to really hammer the point home). 

That's all well and good, though I'm always sceptical of shows about female empowerment that also feature attractive women in skimpy outfits doing hi-octane pole-dancing routines to dubstep. I get that doing this reclaims misogynist imagery and subverts masturbatory objectification, but y'know, it's still a sexy pole dancing routine.

Stuff like that feeds into a subtle but damaging disconnect between narrative and form. Essentially the show feels like a vehicle for various circus routines around which Greek myth and imagery have been stapled rather than the two properly tesselating. That contributes to an emotional disconnect that makes it difficult to care what's happening.

What's left is an okay circus show. The general atmosphere and dramatic lighting of the venue is effective, but while there's nothing objectively wrong with the acrobatics, there is also nothing that audiences who've seen a couple of circus shows won't have seen before. My barometer for a successful circus performance is when the audience spontaneously gasps and applauds during a piece, so impressed that they cannot help but react. This happens once or twice over the course of the night, but in general things are a bit muted.

Then there's the little gripes. Constantly being asked to sit down, stand up and being herded around the room every couple of minutes quickly gets old. The expectation that you're to wear a surgical mask for the entire show is annoying (most people discard theirs early on). And the wub-wub-wub dubstep effects on the soundtrack are a bit dated in 2018.

Becoming Shades isn't a bad show but it never comes together in a satisfying way; ending up as a collection of disparate elements that awkwardly rub up against one another. At £30 a ticket it's one of the more expensive (possibly the most expensive) show at the Vaults - if I'd have paid that I'd be feeling a little short-changed.

Becoming Shades is at Vault Festival until 18 March. Tickets here.

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Review: 'Flip Fabrique: Catch Me' at the Underbelly Festival, 23rd May 2017

Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Flip Fabrique: Catch Me reviewed by David James

Rating:

It's a real good time to be a fan of attractive people spiralling through the air. Compagnie XY have just wrapped up an excellent run at the Roundhouse and this year's Underbelly Festival promises a stellar lineup of acrobatic entertainment all summer long. As a mark of the upswing in popularity of these shows, Underbelly opens its gates with Flip Fabrique's 'Catch Me', an acrobatic show in which the laws of physics seem to be bent (and occasionally broken).

Hailing from Montréal, Flip Fabrique are Hugo Ouellet Cote, Jeremie Arsenault, Camila Comin, Bruno Gagnon, Christophe Hamel and Yann Leblanc. As is the style these days, they ditch sequins in favour of casual urban gear, which, combined with the chalk graffiti that appears throughout the show, the minimalist stagecraft, and the tasteful (if a little bland) contemporary music gives the experience a chilled out vibe.

But the aesthetic is just the side salad. The main course is their skills and boy howdy, these six are practically superhuman. All have physiques you could set your watch by and all have acrobatic and dextrous abilities borne of hundreds upon hundreds of hours of backbreaking training and working out. 

Even so, in most shows of this ilk, the first time someone flies through the air and lands with a smile the crowd lets out a collective gasp, but then repetition dulls the thrill as they become accustomed to what they're seeing. Not here. 

It's a mark of both their skill and showmanship that the routine that most audibly stunned us was their last. This was a trampoline routine that's a fine demonstration of Newton's laws. Hurling themselves off a high perch, the troupe loop and spiral around one another like a human perpetual motion machine. They run up vertical walls, rocket into a perfect handstand, and flip and tumble with geometric precision.

It's a breathtaking finale and a great example of the wisdom of saving the best for last. Of course, the rest of the show is no slouch. Each member of Flip Fabrique gets a moment to shine, with a particular gem being Hugo Ouellet Cote's jaw-dropping rope routine, which combines intense concentration with obvious taxing physical exertion, with a cherry of humour popped on top. 

The only thing us that next to the stunning acrobatics, the more traditional juggling and diabolo routines feel a bit overfamiliar. Don't get me wrong, it's a really good juggling act, but anyone familiar with this kind of show will be all too used to this kind of thing. The diabolo routine is a bit better - one of the best I've seen in a while in fact - but again it pales in comparison to the acrobatic routines.

Iffier are the show's stabs at comedy, which primarily consists of loud screeching, babbling nonsense and OTT mugging. Most of thiscomes courtesy of Bruno Gagnon, who appears to be trying to inject a bit of traditional clown slapstick into the show. Judging by the audience's baffled, laugh-free reaction to Gagnon's antics it simply isn't hitting. Perhaps there's a bit of cultural miscommunication here: the broad gallic comedy not a great fit for a British audience.

But hey - this is all nitpicking. When Catch Me is firing on all cylinders it's utterly engrossing. I was on the edge of my seat in wonder at the best bits, finding myself gasping and applauding on pure instinct. It's a fantastic choice of premiere for a very promising Underbelly festival, and I can't imagine anyone coming away from this without a wide, happy smile plastered across their face. 

'Flip Fabrique: Catch Me' is at the Underbelly Festival on the South Bank until 9th July. Tickets and details here.

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Review: 'Compagnie XY presents It's Not Yet Midnight' at the Roundhouse, 11th April 2017

Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Compagnie XY presents It's Not Yet Midnight' reviewed by David James

Rating:

Great acrobatic shows are as much about the personality of the individual performer as the quality of the tricks. After all, if I wanted to see technically precise gymnastic routines I'd just pop along to a sports competition. But French circus collective Compagnie XY's personality isn't focused on an individual performer hogging the spotlight but on the personality of the company as a whole.

Their latest show, It's Not Yet Midnight, is a classily minimalist demonstration of the group's skills and guiding philosophy. Whether they're writhing around one another like a centipede-limbed gestalt or spiralling through the air in defiance of Isaac Newton, it's genuinely thrilling. How can your jaw not drop when you see people stacked four high on top of one another: if they were to fall their only crash mat is the waiting arms of a fellow performer or the hard stage floor.

Despite this, it's easy to get blase about acrobatic shows. Yes, it takes years of pain, sweat and dedication to be able to do this stuff and yes, it's intrinsically exhilarating to see the human body flying through the air. But let's face it, if you've seen one person doing a handstand on someone's head you've pretty much seen them all. This is where circus shows can founder: the audience will probably be familiar with the impressive feats, and showing them something new requires elite levels of skill and heightens the danger to the performers (if your star acrobat is nursing a broken leg it kinda puts the kibosh on a tour).

What smart companies do is layer the tumbling and tricks on top of a firm intellectual skeleton - giving us a bit of context. And this is precisely what Compagnie XY do - giving us a physical argument of the merits of cooperation and trust vs paranoid individualism.

Which is why we open with a mass brawl. One performer strolls onto the stage looking pleased with himself, before being roughly tackled and tossed across the stage. He lands with a thump, gets up and launches himself at his assailant. Soon the room is full of tussling performers, all beating the crap out of one another. It's an eye-opening start and a fine contrast to an evening in which life and limb hinges on trust. Would you hurl yourself backwards from a second story building on the promise that someone will catch you?

It's Not Yet Midnight stacks people on top of one another like they're pieces in some gigantic Lego set, coming up with all kinds of unlikely configurations, or using the performers as counterweights to launch backflipping people high into the air from a seesaw, or as the legs of a multi-tiered human wedding cake. This combination of strength and grace impresses even the most sourpuss cynic - the audience audibly gasping and breaking into spontaneous applause throughout.

There's a few mistakes here and there (at one point someone painfully thwacks into the floor), but the flaws only underline the point that these people or not so different from you or I. This is helped by them all wearing muted smart casual - if you saw them on the street you'd probably think they were refugees from a GAP photoshoot rather than high-octane circus performers. That these normal looking people can execute such jaw-dropped acrobatic manoeuvres only amplifies the message - we are stronger together than we are alone.

Maybe the only fly in the ointment is a slight sense of twee-ness that pervades the latter half of the show - men with lumberjack beards, suspenders and ties energetically lindy-hopping teeters right on the edge of hipster self-parody. But quibbles aside, this is a powerful, effective and concise show that's pretty much guaranteed to please. It's Not Yet Midnight gives us acrobatics where the brain is at least as important as the bicep.

It's Not Yet Midnight is at the Roundhouse until 23 April.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

'Circa: Closer' at the Udderbelly, 19th April 2016

Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Circus is usually all about razzle-dazzle. Sequined costumes, rictus grins, glittery lipstick, flaming rings - stuff like that. Circa push against all that, their shows straddling contemporary dance and circus via sleek monochrome minimalism. Their latest at the South Bank's Udderbelly is Closer, which, as its name suggests, is all about intimacy and physical contact: the acrobatics of human interaction.

With front row seats I got to observe them at close range. Awe is all but inevitable on viewing intense feats of strength, balance and timing. To a classily refined indie-tinged soundtrack they tie themselves up in knots high above the hard floor, arrange themselves atop one another into living human sculptures and confidently stroll over each other's strong-as-steel bodies. Best of all, at close range you observe the tiny tics that others might miss: quickly fading crimson hand-prints on backs; eyes locked ahead in fierce concentration while subtly shifting your weight to maintain balance; or the exhalation after successfully enduring four people standing atop your body.

Simply performing feats like this is worthy of praise. The audience gasps and applauds with each triumphant moment, each of us marvelling at the dedication needed to tune the human body to such a high standard of excellence. Frankly, just watching attractive, incredibly fit people in skintight lycra flexing their muscles is far from the worst time you can have in London on a Tuesday night.

And yet I found myself surprisingly unmoved by Closer. At least for the first two thirds the performers appeared to have been instructed to display no personality or emotion. While that fits right in with the minimalist musical setlist and staging, it got a bit creepily cold-hearted. Despite obviously the five having perfect trust and synchronisation, I couldn't detect any camaraderie or even pleasure in their movements. 

Staring into the blank, expressionless face of someone dangling, motionless, from a trapeze made me think of dolls, robots or puppets - presumably rather far from the intimacy they appear to be going for. The parade of hyper-taut flexing bodies eventually reminded me of Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia; in which the muscled human form is fetishised by the fascist film-maker, linking her subjects to ancient Greek statuary.

Mercifully, things take a turn for the personable in the final couple of segments. Some audience interaction is pleasant and amusingly flirty, splashing a bit of much-needed comedy into affairs. Similarly, a spirited hula-hoop routine, while not exactly breaking new ground, is as good as any hoop routine I've seen previously. There's even a spot of karaoke where we're asked to sing along with The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony (though, confusingly this doesn't seem to actually go anywhere).

It feels a little churlish to criticise performers like this. They're close to the pinnacle of human physical perfection, their physiques the product of hours of pain, gallons of sweat and rivers of tears. Who can imagine what they've had to sacrifice to be able to entertain us like this? Even so, about two thirds of Closer left me cold - far from feeling closer I felt like the performers were consciously distancing themselves from the audience and from each other.

★★★

Circa: Closer is at the Udderbelly until 12th June 2016. Tickets here.

Monday, December 14, 2015

'The Christmas Wishlist' at the Yard Theatre, 13th December 2015

Monday, December 14, 2015 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Feels like it's been a while since I last sat in a drafty Hackney Wick warehouse watching East London artists at play. Christmas Wishlist, organised by Theatrefullstop, is a smörgåsbord of the arts; encompassing theatre, dance, monologues, comedy, circus acts, poetry and burlesque. 

First up is We Play Projects with what is ominously described as an "avant garde musical". That's the kind of phrase that sends a chill through any critic's bones, imagining some impenetrable chunk of po-faced obscurantism. Fortunately, We Play Projects come at this with sense of humour and willingness to get a bit self-deprecating. As two performers lasciviously writhe around one another, while another chants "this must be art", a third annoyedly exclaims that she's not getting paid for any of this, worries about losing her wallet (then finds it) and finally heads to the bar to order a drink and gossip with the bartender. The performance ends with a bit of puking; to their credit I'm not sure whether it was real puke or not.

We Play Projects

Next up is Jessica Andrade, who emerges to the rattlingly 90s tones of the Spice Girls' Spice Up Your Life. This is The Brownie Club, a comedic circus piece about the performer's memories of racism in school. Andrade proves to be impressively chameleonic, the most impressive moment coming as she dons a sari and, for a couple of minutes, plays the stereotypically submissive Asian girl, before lapsing back into her Londony tones.

Following that is the confessional Sex With Your Ex by Ese Ighorae. Raw and ragged, Ighorae snowballs from emotionally bruised to wounded to half-dead, explaining that to her ex she's "Lidl not Sainsburys". Ouch. Things only get darker from there; a performance infused with white-hot fury and miserable regret at those who've taken advantage of her, and worse, at herself for allowing them to.

More dance next with Emi Del Bene, fusing contemporary dance with Bharatanatyam. A likeable stage presence, she endears herself to us the moment she off-handedly remarks about how cold the floor is on her bare feet. To Fabrizio De André's Il sogno di Maria, del Bene expressively twirls and gesticulates, her motions translated into sound by the jingling bells on her feet. De Andre's song is about profane and anarchic readings of Christian religion, so it's appropriate that her dance includes ritual dancing from a different cultures. Perhaps it was a touch too literally choreographed (touching her back when the song mentions vertebrae for example), but given that the majority of the audience won't speak Italian, this is an easy criticism to duck.

Prior to the interval we get a spoken-word monologue from Adam Tyler. The organisers have been asked beforehand to tell us as little as possible about it, but from the first minute or so it's obvious what's going on. Tyler's playing the biblical Judas, out to explain himself and moan that he's become the byword for betrayal. In the delivery I detected more than a whiff of Tony Blair; behaving as if fancy rhetoric can paper over crimes against humanity.

Post interval, the next performer was Cici Noir with a short burlesque performance. To the rolling electric guitars of Carrie Underwood's Before He Cheats Noir squirms all over a chair and to slightly muted whoops partially strips. I haven't really got anything against burlesque, but this performance felt out of place amongst the other pieces. The best 'arty' burlesque has some kind of twist, but this was just someone taking off their clothes to MOR soft-rock. 

Letters to Centre Stage

Fortunately the next piece marked a definite up-tick in quality. Letters to Centre Stage, set within a Nigerian girls boarding school, consisted of an extended debate over Western reactions to the abduction of schoolgirls in Nigeria. The central character, played by Ese Ighorae, is a London born and raised girl unhappily relocated at the will of her uncle. She attempts to defend her position against the incisive comments of her classmates. Evocatively written and performed, the piece probes at the edges of British quasi-racist apathy to events in Africa, the lingering aftereffects of colonialism and the ineffectiveness of 'feel good' gestures in the face of genuine evil. It was brill -  thrumming with the precise kind of electric directness I crave.

Dois Stupid Girls

Next up was Dois Stupid Girls, with a circus themed comedic performance. I think the plot was about a girl wishing for an elf, then the two overcoming their suspicions with each other and becoming fast friends. Considering the generally festive tone of the invitation and venue, the night was up to this point a bit lacking in Christmassyness. Stupidity made up for it, a gentle and heartwarming piece that reminded me a bit of a live-action Pixar short.

The final performance was the balls-out craziness of Ugly Collective, with a "circus sex tragedy". In practice this involved some seriously dangerous looking stunts, involving walking across a broken glass and lying down in it, before charging about the stage with sharpened kitchen knives with reckless abandon. It's a bit scary to see something that looks genuinely dangerous on stage - reaching a height when they attaching carving knives to a woman's feet and encouragie her to wobble across the room like a particularly stabby penguin. The piece was performed with such wilful disregard for health and safety that the person sat next to me evacuated their seat in terror - a ringing endorsement. There were hints of Nietzsche throughout, but frankly I've got no goddamn idea what this was about. Fun to watch though.

Ugly Collective

All in all a pretty damn fine night out. Grab-bags like these may be of variable quality, but common to all was a spirit of adventure and willingness to experiment. Also, I won a bottle of wine in the raffle, so there's a nicely alcoholic cherry on top of the cake.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

'Traces' at The Peacock Theatre, 10th June 2015

Thursday, June 11, 2015 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Attractive twenty-something acrobats flying through the air to Radiohead? I suppose there are worse ways to spend a Wednesday night. This is Traces, the current show from Les 7 doights de la main / The 7 Fingers, billed as "the world's coolest contemporary circus company." For once it might not be hyperbole; Traces is a laid-back, stylish and fashionable show filled with  feats that conjure up constant involuntary gasps.

In recent years, acrobatics shows seem to have banished sequins, tights and vaseline smiles in favour of earthy, low-key authenticity. Autumnal pastels, natural fabrics and indie rock are the name of the game, all part of a mission to ground the acrobats as regular people (doing amazing things). The implication being that, crazy though these feats are, with enough practice and dedication you or I could be twirling majestically through the air. 

This crusade to get the us to identify with the performers means they can't just be stony-faced acrobat-automatons, they've got to be likeable. Fortunately, The 7 Fingers have a surfeit of charisma - their personalities practically radiating off the stage throughout the performance. 

For most of the first part of the show their individuality is repeatedly underlined. They introduce and describe themselves, giving us a potted history of their lives to date. Then, as if competing for our attention like naughty children, they barge and jostle amongst each other for the spotlight. At times they even square off against each other and for a brief moment, it seems that fists might fly in annoyance.

This makes a decent chunk of Traces weirdly melancholic, a peculiar contrast to the intense physicality of the performances. This all feeds into a subtle psychic misery that suffuses the cast - are these flips, dives and tumbles a manifestation of some inner woe? After all, who hasn't been so annoyed that they've felt like they're climbing the walls? By the time they're climbing poles to Radiohead's dour masterpiece Talk Show Host (with the repeated refrain "I wanna be someone else") you pray they're going to snap out their funk.

They do - if half of the show shows insecure jockeying for attention, the other fuses the company into one organism and develops bonds of trust. Perhaps the clearest example is when a giant see-saw is produced. With two cast members perched on a scaffold, a third stands opposite them. The two jump down onto the see-saw, propelling the third into an impossibly high parabolic arc. As he spins gracefully through the air, the rest of the cast catch him on a large cushion, which he hits with a satisfying *thump*.

The slightly depressive mood of the first half makes these explosions of energy that much more uplifting. It's this carefully considered emotional core that sets 7 Fingers apart from the rest. Sure it's awe-inspiring to watch someone bending their body into a gravity-defying pretzel high above a hard stage, but it's even more intense when you genuinely care about that person.

Even without all that on top, the simple skill in Traces would make it a more than worthwhile watch. Just watching someone put their body through this, firing themselves through tiny hoops with laser-guided precision or doing a mind-bogglingly complex diabolo routine. My personal favourite bits were the aforementioned Radiohead routine, the pleasing-to-the-eye 'Cyr Wheel'  and an awesomely cool, gymnastically excellent segment set to UNKLE's Burn Your Shadow.

It's difficult to imagine much else topping this in terms of circus in London this summer. A wonderful watch from start to finish, topped off with heaping dollops of élan. Recommended.

★★★★

Traces is at The Peacock Theatre until 12th July 2015. Tickets here.

Thursday, April 30, 2015

'A Simple Space' at the Udderbelly

Thursday, April 30, 2015 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Most people dread getting dragged up on stage during a performance. Not me. Sure it's scary in that "I hope my flies aren't undone" sort of way, but not once have I ever regretted sitting on the front row. That said, I had some serious misgivings when a smiling performer extended his hand and hoisted me up onto the gym mat. A couple of minutes later I was lying flat on my back with an acrobat balanced on my outstretched palms. 

The experience cut to the heart of  A Simple Space. Being inches below a woman standing on her palms, an intense gaze burning a hole in the stage, veins wrapped around her muscles like steel cables and beads of sweat mazing their way down her face cements the effort, concentration and toll that these gymnastics take.

Composed of seven young acrobats from Australian company Gravity & Other Myths, the show makes an austere first impression. The set is a square mat with a couple of lights at each corner and the performers are clad in khaki and pastel tops, creating an effect not unlike being trapped in a GAP advert. We soon realise that everything that's not vital to the performance has been stripped away- the company even do their own lighting cues live on stage.

Minimalist it may be, but the aesthetic heightens the many feats we see before us. These range from human sculptures that bristle with limbs, to performers balancing in shaky human towers, being whirled around the stage by their wrists, leaping onto each other's backs or being gracefully tossed in parabolic arcs towards each other. This is standard acrobatics fare, but it's still thrilling as all hell. There's something adrenaline inducing in watching someone plummet towards the ground, only to be caught at the last moment and bounce up smiling, or the wobbly intensity of a man balancing three people on his head.

There's a bedrock of skill here that all but guarantees A Simple Space will entertain, but what's most interesting is where they deviate from expectations.The classical acrobat show is all tassled outfits, vaseline smiles, safety nets, circus lighting and glitter, shooting for the goal of showing the performer as an effortlessly graceful automaton, an image that this company are keen to subvert.

They achieve it by emphasising anatomical and emotional effort. Key to this is the obvious fatigue; the performers going red in the face as their muscles shiver n' shake under the strain. All this is accompanied by a symphony of grunts, groans and moans - leaving us in no doubt as to the effort going into every motion. Another deviation from the norm is baking in elements of failure. Many of the acts are competitions between the company - the most eyecatching a backflip contest. Stood in a row, they take turns backflipping to a rhythmic beat, eliminating a person when they fall to the group.

Paradoxically, the constant sight of failure makes the show that much more impressive. It drums into us the effort, training and skill needed to do even the simplest gymnastic action, as well as allowing us to empathise with what's going on before our eyes. It all feels extremely modern - the scuffed knees and bleeding feet in perfect sync with a contemporary YouTube/Vine fails orientated audience.

As far as an hour's entertainment on the South Bank goes it's totally worthwhile. Sure, there's not a huge amount of depth to it - but then you don't go to an acrobatic show expecting a life changing emotional experience. For what it is, it's superb; a thousand thumps, gasps and smiles combining into a straight-up fun tapestry of tumbling. 

A Simple Space is at the Udderbelly, South Bank until 24th May. Tickets here.