Mud’n Gutz, Fly off the Wall

Review in Issue 7-4 | Winter 1995

Ever wanted to run away with the circus? Mud’n Gutz will put you off; it boasted, and, without wishing to sling mud, or put the boot in, it was off-putting. Gumbooted and under-rehearsed performances struggled to get a grip in the treacherous terrain of a text which was provided in the first half via the startlingly ill-considered device of ‘Novelty’ TV Journalism – a wrestling match between an offensively mocking irony and an extraordinarily lecturing tone. Neither side won and so this ‘Comic Circumentary’ rarely entertained or informed.

The shorter second half, a spectrum of uninterrupted circus acts, served as well as the first to demonstrate that the romance and excitement generated routinely by the uncomfortable, sometimes unpolitically correct world of traditional circus, in which performers may struggle to keep up a frenetic pace and smile cheesily through the pain, cannot be matched by pale imitations which foolishly undermine their own performance by winking ‘knowingly’ at the audience.

Presenting Artists
Presenting Venue
Date Seen
  1. Sep 1995

This article in the magazine

Issue 7-4
p. 25