Seven expert acrobats from Australia’s own Gravity & Other Myths company perform tricky routines, play cheeky games and manage impressive feats of teamwork, all within a simple square space and with hardly any props. There are plenty of over the top gags, though, in a circus performance as full of belly laughs as it is gymnastics.
The show opens with an enjoyable vitality: at frenetic pace, the performers move across the stage, shouting ‘falling’ before keeling over and being swept up again, just as they are about to faceplant the floor. The intimacy of the setting, played in the round, ups the thrill factor and helps to forge a warm camaraderie with the audience, who in turn cheer much more easily.
The scenes in the show regularly morph from traditional circus sequences to showy pantomime-like spectacle, where the audience is encouraged to delight in the misfortunes of the crew. The loser of a jovial skipping game is made to jump a final round clothed in very little. In another short sketch, two acrobat girls select men from the audience to see who can lift them the longest.
Sometimes, over-exaggeration and the demand for a crowd response make it hard to take the performance very seriously, which may be the point. Do the games display skill, or have they been created for show only – and do we really care who comes out top, anyway? Taken on face value, this is a great family show, full of easy humour, but there isn’t much depth beyond the display.
The acrobatics really come to life towards the end of the show, when the choreography takes a more dangerous and original turn. Balancing on four hands, two women are inverted upside down, like a starfish in the air, again and again, before their bodies are used as human skipping ropes, knocking over a male colleague in the process. These moments are fabulous, but too few amid the hearty jokes to really keep you on the edge of your seat.
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A Simple Space is at the Aurora, Hyde Park North. Sydney festival 2015 runs from 8 to 26 January at venues citywide. Find all Guardian Australia’s coverage here
