The latest Edinburgh piece from Circa is a more low-key affair than in previous years, when the Australian company has filled the vast McEwan Hall with their artful acrobatics. This year, the aim is to produce a more intimate circus experience, one that lets the audience see every ripple of muscle.
Well, up to a point. You might be able to, if you are in the first few rows. But, despite a giant screen that shows slick, pre-recorded footage of the performers flying through the air as if they are in some kind of high-definition lifestyle advert, this is an oddly unrevealing evening. The tricks are, as ever, utterly impressive; some excellent hand-balancing, a routine on the Chinese pole that makes the audience wince and gasp, some wonderful rope work and a tower built with chairs that seems so ridiculously determined to defy gravity that you can’t help fearing it will end in disaster. It doesn’t, of course, but if you are close enough, you will see sweat pour down, a lip bitten in concentration, a whispered instruction, a grimace.
It strikes me that Circa, always so creatively ahead of the circus game, are missing a trick with this show. Unlike Casus’ Knee Deep, which played a far cosier space, you are never going to achieve real intimacy in an upside-down purple cow unless you use technology. But the use of a screen here doesn’t go far enough: the footage underscores our idea of circus performers as super-human. How much more interesting would it be if the trick being performed were relayed live on to the screen, so we could simultaneously see it in all its apparent perfection and also see every muscle either acquiescing or screaming?
The other thing about the show is the fact that there are many different kinds of intimacy and, oddly, this quartet are far less self-revealing than we’ve seen in other Circa shows. They seem a nice enough bunch, but are defined entirely by what they do. They work as a consummate unit in which individual personalities don’t shine through. Even when one of them deconstructs what he does on the Chinese pole, it feels carefully scripted rather than genuinely shared.
There is plenty to enjoy here, and if you want to see a really well constructed circus show with top-of-their-game performers, this won’t disappoint. The evening is worth the price of admission alone for the final glorious 10 minutes, in which prowess and joy come together in a quite extraordinary display of hula hooping. But Circa can deliver far more than they dare risk here.
- At Underbelly, Edinburgh until 31 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000
