Race Horse Circus Petit-Mal

Race Horse Company: Petit Mal Concrete Circus

Laughing in the wreckage, standing defiant as the world throws things at you – and the rivalry of men up against it. These are the ideas at the heart of Petit Mal.

We start in what seems to be a moody, gloomy garage or basement, the stage so dark that it’s hard to see what’s happening (from my seat in the rear stalls, anyway). Steely blue and dull amber lights. Clunking metal parts, stacked car tyres, discarded planks of wood. The sound of grinding guitars, and Bob Dylan’s growling voice blares out from the PA: ‘Same old rat race, life in the same old cage.’ Cue descent of a rusty old ‘cage’ and some beefy acro and aerial moves from the three-man team onstage. It’s hard to say how and why a big blue yoga-ball and a trampoline belong in this world, but they get worked in effortlessly. In this opening section, the themes and the key skills of the show are established. Company frontman Petri Tuominem is a good all-rounder and a superb Chinese Pole artist with a hard-edged attacking style. Rauli Kosonen ups the ante with his extraordinary trampolining – somehow ultra-relaxed and dynamic at one and the same time. The big and bearded Kalle Lehto is an earthy breakdancer and object manipulator, and a highly magnetic performer who wins my attention again and again, despite the competition. Boys will be boys, and the three tug and tussle their way through a succession of stunning scenes.

If this first 20 minutes had been it, then this would be a brilliant show. Word on the (circus) street has it that this in fact was the original show: a prize-winning short that got feted and supported and eventually made into a full-length show – a show that is somehow less than the sum of its parts. They would have been better off creating three separate short pieces and touring them together. In some ways, this is what this show feels like.

A middle section plays out as a surreal dreamscape. There is a sudden wash of bright light and colour, flashing strobes, and ear-bleeding beats – Scrooge McDuck pops up on-screen, the stage is taken over by a galloping pantomime horse, the space fills up with bouncing balls and falling feathers, a trio of Elvises (Elvii?) in flared white jumpsuits leap around. Why I don’t know, but it’s all enjoyable enough, particularly the terrifyingly funny half-a-horse trampolining.

We then return to the gloomy moody world of the opening section, and Dylan’s ‘Highlands’ starts in again – the song is played at least three times in this 70-minute show, interspersed with Joy Division and DJ Shadow tracks, and compositions by the show’s sound designer Tuomas Norvio. This section is the shakiest structurally – the pace dips and soars, and there are at least three false endings before we get the final scene, which turns out to be a coda rather than a climax – but it’s a great showcase of the circus skills. Rauli Kosonen’s final bout on the trampoline is breathtaking.

Petit Mal has been touring for a few years, yet this performance felt a little shaky. I got the feeling that the company are done with it, moving on (they are just about to start work on their new show, Super Sunday). Or perhaps the slightly slack feel of some sections was a result of the appalling inattentiveness of the audience, many of whom – dressed in Santa hats with drinks in hand, arriving late, leaving early, constantly nipping off to the loo, chatting throughout – seemed to have come to the wrong show. They were expecting some light-hearted entertainment, and Petit Mal is far from that, it’s dark and dangerous. And the show was marketed as ‘an exhilarating spectacle from start to finish’ for all the family, so there were inevitably a fair few cross parents ferrying distressed five-year-olds out of the auditorium throughout.

Circus presentation in the UK, it would seem, is still battling with audience (and perhaps programmer) expectations that it exists to provide nothing more than a fun family spectacle. That aside, Petit Mal is an enriching experience – dramaturgically flawed, but full of extraordinary ideas, and performed by three top-notch circus artists with world-class skills in unusual areas of practice.

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Dorothy Max Prior

About Dorothy Max Prior

Dorothy Max Prior is the editor of Total Theatre Magazine, and is also a performer, writer, dramaturg and choreographer/director working in theatre, dance, installation and outdoor arts. Much of her work is sited in public spaces or in venues other than regular theatres. She also writes essays and stories, some of which are published and some of which languish in bottom drawers – and she teaches drama, dance and creative non-fiction writing. www.dorothymaxprior.com