Author Archives: Adrian Berry

Cirque Alfonse: Timber

Walking out of the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night, a young chap in front of me looked up at his father and asked: ‘Can I fly when I’m a hundred, dad?’

Such was the wonder and joyous enthusiasm created by Cirque Alfonse with their London debut of Timber – an all-singing, all-dancing, banjo-fuelled hoedown with a few tweaks and a cheeky twist of pretty much every circus discipline in town – hill-billy style. Yee haw.

It’s easy to be cynical about what often appears to be ‘authentic’ reinventions of the form, but in this case it’s 100% genuine. Three generations of an extended family led by Grandpa Alain Carabinier (he of the flying grandad fame – more of that later) created this show in the family barn in the tiny town of Saint-Alphonse-Rodriguez, Quebec. As children Carabinier used to drive them 150 kilometres for circus lessons every week and they eventually rewarded him with their own travelling show. Their joie de vivre and family bonhomie is infectious and the backstory only adds to the enjoyment.

There’s no innovation here, but nor does there try to be. What we get instead is deft use of well-designed and adapted objects: the Chinese pole (a giant crooked stick), acrobalance (on logs), tightwire (another length of tree), cyr wheel (a wagon wheel) – you get the picture. Buffoonery, barndancing and banjos are the order of the day as the family argue, fuss and fight amidst the ordered chaos and lumbering, yet agile, physicality of the heavyweight bearded farmer boys. Jonathan Casaubon is the star of the show – a multi-skilled performer with a disciplined approach sometimes lacking in some of the other set pieces. However, the often deliberate and only occasional sloppiness just adds to the charm of the piece.

Look closer and there is some beautiful and intricate work on display at times. The axe juggling and acrobalance is executed with pizazz and care, whilst the clowning, although non-too subtle, makes the kids, big and small, roar with laughter. When Carabinier is repeatedly launched by his son-in-law into the stratosphere he manages some deft turns and spins as he soars above the front few rows. Julie Carabinier-Lépine’s duet on straps with her husband feels a little tacked on at the end, but it’s a fitting climax and is well performed. Added cute factor comes from an appearance of their toddler of a son who even manages an acrobatic feat himself at the curtain call.

Timber doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s a fun, frivolous and celebratory night out for the whole family. Pull on your clogs, plaid shirt and dungarees and go make hay at the South Bank with this rustic romp.

Stumble danceCircus: Box of Frogs

Presented as part of the Unlimited season at the Southbank Centre, Stumble danceCircus’ 70 minute piece is unusual in that the issue it explores – bipolar disorder – is one of the most ‘invisible’ disabilities in society today. How do you tackle manic depression on a stage? With a non-stop sensory assault of hyperactive acrobatics, rope work, trick cycling and hula-hooping of course.

Slow to start, deliberately so, director Mish Weaver’s seven-strong troupe (including two musicians) lead us on a stream of consciousness tour of the illness, but never preach nor try to explain themselves too graphically, allowing the absurdity of a life lived with such radical highs and debilitating lows to be metaphorically represented by the passion and extremities of the circus artist.

Each performer represents, in some way, a different facet of bipolar disorder, from Kaveh Rahnama’s comedic non-stop acro-mania and toy elephant obsession, through to Paddy Waters’ infuriatingly joyous ringmaster, whose frequent outbursts of ‘A-ha!’ cause much mirth in the stalls. Throughout, the vaudeville Tom Waits-esque live score provides a perfectly pitched pared-down musical narrative, its sleazy oompah drawl constantly matching the mood swings of the performers and their movements – especially Waters’ trick cycling, the spectacle of which drew frequent gasps from the audience. The interaction of video and animation, including Chris Patfield’s on-screen juggling and seamless integration with the live performance, provides another dimension to the piece without feeling forced.

Lauren Hendry and Silvia Pavone offer a less manic view with their measured and highly skilled performances of acrobalance and hula-hooping respectively, making bipolar disorder look almost fun until Lyn Routledge’s tour-de-force assault on the corde lisse makes you yearn for release and some down time. Eventually we’re rewarded with exactly that as Box of Frogs climaxes beautifully, the music, movement and mood beginning to wind down into a trance-like state of drugged out calm. Box of Frogs leaves us floating on air – an emotional rollercoaster cabaret.

www.stumbledancecircus.com

Edinburgh Cabaret Round-up

The Bolshy, the Glam and the Outrageous

More and more every year, the medium of cabaret is making its bolshy, glam, outrageous presence known at the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s often hard to tell the rough from the smooth, the tart from the tasteful, and audiences are faced with a countless bevy of burlesquers, saucy ironic strips, the avant-garde, and the downright dirty. How do you choose? And where does the integrity lie amongst so much attention-seeking?

Thankfully this year there was so much pleasure and pathos to be found from all over the world and also closer to home.

Live and direct (as they say) from Australia, those makers of mirth and muck the boys from Briefs never failed to delight with their multi-levelled onslaught of high-energy camp and thrill-spilling circus and magic. Whilst it’s easy to pass such shows off as hen-party-pleasure-giving flights of fancy (and there was much of that in the house the night I was there) there was also political satire, genre / gender-defying acts of bravery and, decidedly non-ironic cultural and political statements to break up the outrageous humour and nudge-nudge-wink-wink under-the-counter humour. A culture-clash stiletto in the face to the ‘bogans’ who fly in the face of such diversity back in their homeland, this was a skilful, hugely comedic display of physicality, originality and bravado. Look out for them next year.

Over at the Voodoo Rooms the minor-legend that is Mat Ricardo dissected the art of the juggler whilst also presenting a most moving script on the history of music hall and vaudeville. In another’s hands this could have been either disastrous or, at the very least, rather dull, but Vaudeville Schmuck was neither. In a tireless performance that drew us into his globe-trotting world of cruise ships and cheesy adverts, Ricardo led us on an A-Z of his heroes – their trials and tribulations, ups and downs – whilst interspersing the narrative with tireless feats of object manipulation and classic tricks reinvented. We left feeling rather richer to have spent an hour basking in his warm and commanding presence.

Over at Assembly, Frisky and Mannish invited us into their 27 Club. Darker and more disturbing than their usual fluffy pop diatribes and mimicry (of which I am a huge fan) the doomed worlds of Jim, Jimi and Janis collided with the tortured souls of Kurt and Amy as we marvelled at the bittersweet humour and musical genius within their heroes and, ultimately, the performers themselves. Watch this one grow.

Another small joy was Piff the Magic Dragon’s Jurassic Bark. Put aside your worries over the treatment of poor defenceless chihuahuas (this one gets the five-star canine hotel treatment I know) and marvel at this modern day Jack Dee in a day-glo cut-price dragon costume as he mentally abuses his long-suffering assistant Amy Sunshine and the poor four-legged Mr Piffles. It’s cabaret reinvented with a twist and some mind-messing magic. Recommended for everyone. Possibly not vets.

Finally, not quite cabaret in its execution but certainly in its approach, another brilliant young company from Australia, Casus, were brooding, sexy and skilful in their show Knee Deep. Largely acrobatically led, and sharing a multi-tattooed/-talented performer from Briefs, this was the distant cousin ofCantina without the brooding gothic mania yet with the same gorgeously intertwined ensemble integration. One woman opposite sat literally with her mouth open, wide-eyed and in awe, the entire sixty minutes. Whilst essentially we were watching minor reinventions of circus classics for a 21st Century audience, it was hard to argue with her reaction.

Circle of Eleven: Leo

Following the huge success of Leo at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe, where it won both a Fringe and a Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Fringe Award, it was a delight to finally catch Circle of Eleven’s magical and rather moving meditation on one man’s state of mind and experience of solitude. Combining unparallelled acrobatics and state of the art ‘sleight of hand’ digital manipulation, the show immerses us in a Becketian trance-like state of dreams, fantasy and (literal) virtual reality as multi-skilled performer Tobias Wegner commands his intimate space and has his every moved echoed by a parallel projection in a perception-defying feat of surreality.

There’s a dark, absurdist clown-like humour which forceably drives Leo, but this is no one-trick circus pony. The on-stage and emotional isolation is compounded by an equal sparsity in the aesthetic which at times echoes the work of Philippe Quesne (L’Effet de Serge in particular), but Leo never feels derivative – far from it. The sharpness and courage of the acrobatics and the equally powerful mime-esque fluidity is combined with a beautifully laissez-faire approach to the physicality which transcends any comparisons. The resulting intense absurdity of the non-linear narrative sweeps you away until you are immersed in this astonishing man’s shape-shifting universe.

The medium of circus constantly strives to explore, overcome and challenge narrative forms, often with varying degrees of success, but Leo in its own way achieved a small, important milestone by engaging its audience without detracting from the sheer skill on display. Perhaps some of the techniques were a little overused at times, but this is a very small criticism for a work so ingenious, so bold and, ultimately, so full of joy for the unbearably transient pleasures of being.

Total Theatre