Produced by Entertainers
The Curve Theatre, Leicester –until 3rd June 2024 then touring
Review by Amanda Allen
3***
I love musicals, I love circus, I love live singing and dancing, so I was really looking forward to seeing Cirque at The Curve in Leicester. Sadly, although each of these elements were present and individually well done the whole didn’t seem to hang together that well. The concept sounded great, but the show was like something I would expect to see at a holiday park as entertainment, Butlins redcoats with a few more sequins. If that is what you are looking for then it’s worth a visit.
The mime artist, Christian Lee was Truly Fantastic. He tied the whole show together, although a bit loosely. With the idea that he was being transported from his black and white life to one of exciting full technicolour through the medium of his new TV, we were treated to some breathtaking circus acts. He even involved two audience members into his act, which was well done, very funny without being embarrassing for them. The best part of the whole show for me was the re-enactment of the famous Titanic scene using the air from a VERY large balloon, it would be worth the ticket money for that one sketch.
My personal favourite was Duo Eclipse, a dynamic skating duo, Steve and Georgia, they truly did defy gravity spinning around in evermore dangerous, fast and unbelievable ways. I half expected Georgia to come flying into the auditorium. The Juggler/ Crossbow act, Thomas Barrandon, was also impressive. Aerialists Jennifer Van Gool was truly spectacular, bending, balancing and moving about beautifully in 3 dimensions.
Although the dancers were all very good, I was a bit disappointed in the lack of imagination in the male dancers costumes, they seemed to think it would be ok to just have bare chested fit dancers and change the colour of their trousers every so often, adding red braces didn’t really help. The female dancers got a bit more imagination but a lot less fabric! There seemed to be sequins on everything. The circus performers had great costumes, all appropriate to the act and the mime doing his quick change from black and white to colour at the end was amazing to see.
The music was great but a bit piecemeal, there seemed to be no thread linking the different song sequences, lots of Greatest Showman, which was well suited to the show, La La Land, Rocket Man and Moulin Rouge not so. I think the show was let down a little by the audio quality, where I was sitting the music drowned out the singers’ voices quite considerably so you couldn’t tell what words they were singing. In one ensemble piece the voice of the female lead Tori Murray was impossible to hear.
There were a lot of children at this performance who all seemed to thoroughly enjoy the show, I can highly recommend it for 6-14 year olds. The magic of circus, song and dance come together to make a good afternoon out for youngsters, however for more experienced theatre goers, I feel that in trying to be the best bits of everything it fell short of being the best of anything by quite a way.