Circus Oz's latest show is dedicated to the principles of "diversity, tolerance and human kindness." All very admirable. But, entertaining as the show is, I was still left hankering for the sawdust-filled circuses of my youth, dedicated to carnivalesque display and equine grace in some distant corner of a tented field.
What is striking now is how much circus skills have entered mainstream theatre. This show starts with veteran clown, Tim Coldwell, applying his make-up while hanging upside down from a metallic strip above the stage. Immediately one thinks of Gavin Lee's Bert in Mary Poppins, who goes one better by tap-dancing across the proscenium arch. And, while it is thrilling to see Oz's aerialists swinging from Chinese poles, those in Kathryn Hunter's Pericles at the Globe perform similar feats while advancing a Shakespearean story.
Animal exploitation is now banned from circuses, but it seems to have been replaced by an emphasis on human oddity. Here the remarkable Count Frodo squeezes his double-jointed frame through a pair of tennis rackets while commenting that "it's amazing what some people do for a living".
But if there is a faint touch of freakishness about Circus Oz there is also genuine skill. Everyone seems to do a bit of everything from high-wire acts to playing musical instruments. At one point the double-bass player is sent hurtling through the air like a berserk Peter Pan. And there is welcome humour to leaven the physical prowess. My favourite moment came when the clown, having read The Guardian's masthead backwards, despatched his mate to fix the bulb at the top of a vertiginous, bendy lamppost. It's all very jolly and based on an authentic communal spirit. But when the clown invited us to join the cast for a drink in the bar afterwards, I recalled the aloofly mysterious, red-coated ringmasters of my youth who, you felt, would have shrunk from such democratic contact.
· Until August 21. Box office: 08703 800400
