The Royal Albert Hall is not the most obvious venue for a circus coming to town. Formal, plush and stately, it hardly lends itself to a spot of clowning around. Yet Cirque du Soleil's slick and somewhat overblown brand of circus suits the place, and would sit uneasily in a tatty big top. This is emphatically circus without any rough edges.
That is not to say that Dralion isn't crammed full of astonishing moments. Beautifully and ambitiously choreographed, it presents the human form as incredibly dexterous and almost liquid. A diminutive young Chinese woman balances on one hand and contorts her body into impossible shapes and arcs; another casually does somersaults on stilts. Seven ballet dancers make sculptural forms with their bodies, on pointe, standing on light bulbs; acrobats jump through increasingly audacious sets of hoops. A juggler catches five balls in a line down his spine, and two trapeze artists, cast as lovers, do some dirty dancing high in the air.
All of this, and more, dazzles. But the show is limited by other elements. The clowns, whose unfunny slapstick scenes you quickly begin to dread, appear too frequently and for too long. And the music, a sub-Enigma ethno-prog-throb, is relentlessly horrendous. The male singer pompously delivers his lines like a castrato Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, and for much of the show he wears a wedding dress. His female singing partner, meanwhile, is dressed like a Christmas-tree fairy.
But you can forgive circuses a lack of restraint. What is harder to forgive is the corporate, bland atmosphere that pervades Dralion: this is a circus that begins with a loud plug for its sponsors. The show may have all the right moves - many of which will make you gasp and swoon - but it does rather lack a heart, and a soul.
· Until January 30. Box office: 020-7589 8212.
