This combination of circus, cabaret and burlesque is now in its 10th season. Seeing it for the first time, I found it raucously enjoyable and full of prodigious physical skill even if its relentless preoccupation with sex eventually becomes a bit wearing.
I take my hat off, however, to Ursula Martinez, who strips with wit, has the capacity to produce a red handkerchief from every available orifice and goes on to give the audience a lesson in rude Spanish. I also admired Marcus Monroe, who, in juggling with visibly sharp knives, is a cut above most of his profession, and Tanya Gagné, who adroitly sheds her clothes while swinging from a trapeze. Denis Lock and Hamish McCann, posing as the English Gents in bowlers and Union Jack underwear, perform breathaking acrobatics while reading the Financial Times, and David and Fofo squirt pingpong balls at each other as they gyrate.
All this is impressive. But whatever humour there is in Scotty the Blue Bunny, an ominously tall man in stilettos and a rabbit suit, sadly passed me by. Asher Treleaven’s graphic reading from a soft-porn novel struck me as faintly adolescent in a style Flanders and Swann once caricatured as “pee-po-belly-bum-drawers”. I was also somewhat puzzled by Puddles Pity Party, which turns out to be yet another gigantic chap singing lugubrious songs while sporting sad clown make-up.
I loved the show’s more daring physical acts. But, although people deride the old-style circus for its exploitation of animals and variety theatre for its tat, they both had a poetry and grace somewhat lacking in this frenetically kaleidoscopic spectacle.
• Until 11 January. Box office: 0844 847 991. Venue: Southbank, London.
