Cirque du Soleil return to London for their 10th successive year, with a show that has already been here twice before. But the last thing fans require of this spectacularly virtuoso troupe is change. What makes them come back for more is the reliable expectation that their eyes will be bulging and their jaws dropping for most of the show.
Alegria ("Joy") is no less vague than any other title the company have come up with, and its storyline no less spurious. The publicity trumpets the piece as a celebration of the socially dispossessed - the poor, the mad, clowns, artists - but what is offered on stage is as glossy and expensive as any show in town.
On a dramatically lit set of machinery and wires, performers in shiny space-age motley vault and tumble through their tricks. While none of these are drastically different from those in any other circus, they are performed at a unique pitch of perfection. As the contortionists bend their limbs into impossible alphabet-spaghetti curves, as the trapeze artists fly vertiginously through space, as the tumblers wheel and jack-knife in fiery formation, you aren't allowed to entertain the notion that anyone could falter, let alone fall. Even the clowns look airbrushed.
For those who don't buy into the package, however, this dulling of suspense starts to matter. It doesn't help that the relentlessly slick choreography irons out the quirks and genius of individual performers, nor that each act comes muffled with the same souped-up muzak. By the end, you feel your sense of wonder has been manipulated, prefabricated. You can observe the show's thrills with perfect clarity, but the smell and the sweat of danger are eerily absent.
· Until February 5. Box office: 0870 145 1163.
