A touch of circus, a touch of music and a touch of burlesque all wrapped up in an eastern European fairytale motif.
Balagan is a show that doesn't know what it wants to be, quite possibly because it wants to be all things to all people. It is like a poor man's Cirque du Soleil, without the megabucks budget. Or a mittel of the road, mittel-European variety show.
A series of projected images evoke silver birch glades and offer a bland singer letting down her tresses like Rapunzel in an ivory tower. If the acts in between the music were better this might pass muster.
Rima Krilove, the girl with the hula-hoops certainly does. She is a whirling gold-ringed dervish. But the clowns are lame and the balancing act cold and clinical.
The hour keeps trying to whip up some passion, some sense of the erotic, but it is just the warmed up leftovers from the dying world of variety.
