Circus Oz Festival Hall, London SE1
A man is singing Frank Sinatra ominously: 'And now, the end is near...' and you wonder if this is prophetic because he is walking upside down across the roof of the Festival Hall - a great antipodean joke and characteristic of the sublime Circus Oz. One snag: the man (Tim Coldwell, founding member of the circus) can't understand why the whisky won't stay in his glass.
This is a brilliant, sexy, zany show - often endearingly untidy at the edges. It includes bicycles on fire, amorous cyclists, a contortionist who squeezes his body through a tennis racket and an incredible team of yellow cockatoos/ trapeze artists. A baby cockatoo falls off his perch, loses his temper and says he is off 'to join Cirque du Soleil'. More fool him. Circus Oz beats Cirque du Soleil for charm and imagination hands down, wings spread, any day of the week.
