Dorothy Max Prior sees three impressive ensemble circus shows at Edinburgh Fringe 2024 – Circa: Humans 2.0, Cassus: Apricity and Recirquel: Paradisum – all exploring what it means to be human

Legendary Australian company Circa have made Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows their home in recent years. Last year, they brought Peepshow to the Hub’s big top space, Lafayette. This year, they returned with another outing for Humans 2.0, last seen in 2022; coming after its predecessor Humans, which was presented at least twice at the Fringe. But the company, under the direction of founder Yaron Lifschitz, are so (deservedly) revered that it would seem that they can pack out the Lafayette for the whole run, no matter how many times the show returns.

Each new incarnation of Humans is its own thing, exploiting the specific physicality and skills of whoever is in the ten-strong ensemble at the time. The design is straightforward. No set or props – just a white circular dancefloor, and an intelligent and effective lighting design, with flashes of strobe and the occasional switch to a bright-red flood of light. There’s nothing to interfere with the fact that it’s all about the human bodies in the space – an exploration of what it is to be human, with trust, support, balance, and collaboration to the fore. Bodies are tossed to each other at the speed of light, human towers rise and fall effortlessly, women and men base other women and men from standing, or lying, or kneeling, or (astonishingly) rising from bridge position bearing a body. It is mostly ensemble, and mostly floor-based work (tumbling or acrobalance or hand-to-hand); but there are a few solos, including an aerial silks act – the performer dressed in black, using black silks, in an ultra-elegant routine. My only disappointment: this particular incarnation of Humans 2.0 has done away with the eclectic and varied soundtrack of previous versions – the Caetano Veloso sambas and ‘lizard’ songs replaced by a hardcore four-to-the-floor electronic score that I found a tad too loud and insistent. I preferred the musical variety of the previous versions… It is still a great show, regardless – but I mourned the loss of musical variety.

Cassus is another esteemed Australian circus company – they really do know how to do circus down under! The company return to the Fringe – and to favoured venue, Assembly Garden’s Palais du Varieté – with Apricity. The cast of five enter from different points in this large Spiegeltent, moving through the auditorium to the stage, everyone carrying a lit candle in a glass jar. Each manipulates their jar with dexterity, moving it round the body then placing it carefully around the edge of the circular stage. It feels like the start of a ritual ceremony. As they move into ensemble work, we are given a number of clever and beautiful images of a multi-limbed human candelabra. Next, a succession of solos or duets or trios. Two of the company’s co-founders, Jesse Scott and  Lachlan McAulay, are in the show, along with three female performers. A feature of the company’s work is the celebration of strong women and sensitive men, and in this show we get to see an immensely strong woman base all four of the other performers at one and the same time; there’s a beautiful and tender trapeze double from Jesse and Lachlan; and a sweet moment from Jesse on hula hoop (hoops are not just for girls, folks!). I also very much enjoy the whimsical solo waltz from Lachlan that turns into a meditative Sufi inspired spin. This is paired with a contrasting balance-walk across a row of glass lanterns to the rear, very much in keeping with the contemporary circus fashion of showing us two things at once, but personally I’d have been happy just focusing on the simple and beautiful spinning. Elsewhere, we have a lovely lyra/cirque act ; a fun ensemble tumbling routine to the cheery 60s pop hit ‘I Said Yeah Yeah’ (one of many well-chosen tracks used with good choreographic sensibility in the show ); a good hand-balancing act; various two-handed acro set pieces; and a very nice rope act that saw two flyers and two bases swapping in and out with breathtaking skill. You don’t see ensemble corde lisse two often! Apricity’s tagline is that it ‘illuminates the power of human connection in times of darkness’ – and that’s clearly what we see and experience here. Job done – another success for Cassus.

Budapest-based Recirquel, led by director Bence Vági, are another company with a strong reputation at the Edinburgh Fringe, following 2023 sell-out success IMA, and the Total Theatre Awards shortlisted My Land (2018). This year, they bring us Paradisum, which like those previous shows seen, feels strongly influenced by mythology. Here, creation myths, and myths of resurrection and regeneration, are at play. It features an ensemble of six, two female and four male performers, all equally adept as soloists and ensemble players.

We start with one lone figure ‘thrown’ into a void, twitching back into life. The last man on earth or the first? Our ‘Adam’ evolves to stand, then moving into an aerial suspended-pole act. As the piece progresses we meet five other characters who emerge from the primeval swamp, crawling and twisting in Butoh-esque choreographies to a soundtrack of eery drones, synths and cello. Each gets a scene on their chosen apparatus – cirque, straps, hand-balancing on high, a ladder-balancing act that incorporates juggling, and a percussive acrobatic act on and around a large wooden box. Each seems to be portraying a process of evolution and exploring the relationship between gravity and levity – between ground and air, between the apes and the angels, with the occasional devil around too. The juggling feels a little out of place (it is always hard to see juggling as anything other than itself) – but everything else works well thematically.

Design-wise, we have a scenography of low lighting and swirling mists punctuated by occasional dazzling spots, and the use of a huge, swaying dark cloth that is manipulated to envelop and reveal figures emerging from the gloom, making them occasionally look like Harry Potter style Dementors, although at other times like fabulous snake-like beasts. There’s a sweet moment when one of the scary-looking beasts is gently patted on the head by a performer. The cloth is used at the end for a lovely moment of transformation and revelation, as our now fully-human characters reach up to the heavens in a gesture of joy and celebration. The soundtrack has by this point moved on from the primeval swamp drones through the use of strings, human vocalisation, percussive beats, and animal screeches and hoots, into a fabulous jungle concerto, in acknowledgement of the inter-dependancy and communion of all earthly life. 

Hallelujah!

Featured photo (top): Cassus: Apricity

Circa: Humans 2.0, Underbelly Circus Hub,  2–24 August 2024

Cassus: Apricity, Assembly Gardens, Palais du Varieté, 1-25 August 2025

Recirquel: Paradisum, Assembly Roxy, 2-24 August 2024

Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 2–25 August 2024. For further information and to book tickets for these and all other Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows, see www.edfringe.com 

Brian Lobel gives us alternate takes on Nick Cassenbaum’s Revenge: After the Levoyah, a ‘two-hander comedy heist that blows the roof off what it means to be Jewish in the UK. ’ Here’s our starting point: Twins Lauren and Dan meet ex-gangster Malcolm Spivak at their grandfather’s funeral. Malcolm, who’s ‘had enough’, enlists the siblings in a ragtag Yiddishe plot to kidnap then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn… Now, choose your viewpoint and read on :

Revenge: After the Levoyah – Review for Non-Jewish Audiences

Revenge: After the Levoyah is a brilliant, comedic, two-handed, action-packed satire that looks unflinchingly and uproariously at a community in crisis. Beyond the flattened narratives of ‘how the Jewish community feels’ about Labour, Corbyn, and anti-semitism in Britain in the lead up to the 2019 election (which were the purview of what felt like every column from The Guardian to Jewish Chronicle to The Times), Revenge uses its multi-roling performers playing gangsters and rabbis and repairmen and Holocaust survivors (and many more) to exemplify the multivalenced perspectives of the UK’s contemporary Jewish community. And the overwhelm of when all those voices speak at once, under pressure, and under the microscope of a country which can’t or won’t think beyond a monolithic British Jewish experience. 

The performances by Gemma Barnett and Dylan Corbett-Bader are deeply sexy – a masterclass in comedic timing and in portraying a diversity of characters with care and generosity. And the script is filed with whatever would be the Jewish equivalent of Easter eggs (Passover matzo balls?) which bring a specific Jewish community and ecosystem to light in a way which is rarely seen. Be warned: there are words you will not understand and that are not explained to you, and Jewish audiences will be laughing at moments that you won’t. But that’s ok, there’s growth in being an outsider. But also, for your reference: Beshert means soulmate/destiny; Palwins is the most famous kind of Jewish wine drank at Shabbos dinner (might the Jewish American in me say it’s culturally comparable to Manischewitz?), and the Board of Deputies… there’s not time in this review to talk about the Board of Deputies. But know that they’ll all be referenced in quick succession inside this whip-smart satire which bravely shows Jewish culture from its own perspective, with its own languages, and its own sense of sense of trauma, laughter and love.

Revenge: After the Levoyah – Review for Jewish Audiences

I realised I was the only Jew in the audience at the National Theatre when I belly-laughed during Roy Cohn’s death scene in Angels in America. During the most sombre moment of Angels in America Part II, the protagonist Lewis – a gay Jewish man much alienated from his Jewish community – nervously goes to say Kaddish over Cohn’s body, and instead, says Kiddush. The prayer over wine, instead of the prayer over the dead. 

Oh I laughed! And laughed! And laughed! And around me: damning silence. 

Five minutes later, Lewis questions his own mistake (which gets a laugh from the wider audience), but the first time he says the Kiddush is a joke reserved just for the Jewish audience. I had never known, with such certainty, that I was the singular Jew in an audience. The genius of this scene in Angels in America is that it speaks directly to its Jewish audience in a way which is unapologetic, targeted and available only to the well-behaved Jews who had paid attention in Sunday school. And boychik, I had paid attention! 

Revenge is like this scene in Angels in America, over and over and over again (in a good way!) in which there’s a lot of entertainment for non-Jewish audiences, but the really deep jokes are just reserved for us. And I even know that, as a Jewish American transplant in the UK, even 17 years in, there are still a lot of references which will go above my head. So rich is Cassenbaum’s script, so wide-ranging his slate of references, so deep is his commitment to capturing this community in all its glorious diversity. Revenge: After the Levoyah gives us contemporary British Jewish life without the need to be palatable to non-Jewish sensibilities, without the need to be loved by the Board of Deputies, or without the need to fit into more convenient political narratives. It’s a bold work which astutely centres Jewish life inside an Essex household and which never aims to speak for a universal Jewish experience, or an agreed Jewish opinion about Corbyn.  

Revenge speaks profoundly to a Jewish audience that will be open to hearing it. The play skilfully avoids being a show about who’s right and who’s wrong and instead gives us what Jews have needed and what antisemitism, and being under such a microscope, often denies us: an epic action adventure somewhere between Kill Bill, Fangirls, White Teeth, Angels in America, Rambo, Brooklyn Nine Nine, The Great Escape and Fiddler on the Roof. 

[Just kidding, it’s nothing like Fiddler on the Roof, I was just testing in case non-Jews were reading]. 

Oh and if you didn’t read the Review for Non-Jewish Audiences above, I’ll summarise: Go see Revenge: After the Levoyah. It’s sexy, funny, radical, smart, and those heads of absolutely gorgeous hair will make you kvell. 

Featured image (top) Revenge: After the Levoyah – photo Christa Holka

Nick Cassenbaum’s Revenge: After the Levoyah, directed by Emma Jude Harris, runs at Summerhall 1-26 August, as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024. See edfringe.com for further information on this and other Ed Fringe shows.

Dorothy Max Prior sees an interesting batch of solo shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024. Although some turn out to be other than what they first seem to be…

As ever, there were very many solo shows on offer at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. Sit in Pleasance Courtyard for 5 minutes, or stroll along the Royal Mile (if you can bear it) and you will be regaled by performers selling you their one-person shows. Many are autobiographical, or comic, or both. There’s more than a fair few focused on personal identity, overcoming adversity, or surviving trauma. Others involve the taking on of a character, or multiple characters, in a storyteller role.

Of course, this being Total Theatre, I’m keen to seek out the work that best fits our remit. We are not strictly promoting ‘physical and visual’ work alone these days, but I’m still drawn strongly to work that has its roots in physical and devised theatre training, for example, coming from the Lecoq tradition or from the circus or clown world.

On the first day of the Fringe, I start in at Summerhall with a very lovely show called Julieta, by Mexican clown Gabriela Muñoz, who was previously seen at the London International Mime Festival with Perhaps Perhaps Quizas. Gabriela goes out as Chula the Clown, who in this case is playing the eponymous Julieta – a lady of a certain age who marks her days alone in her home with a succession of small rituals. It is beautiful clowning. Gaby Muñoz has a fantastic presence as a performer, and really understands the performer/audience relationship – be it the small glances and shrugs or the bigger gestures and interactions (a game of noughts and crosses; a silent invitation to help her with her lipstick or nail varnish). It is also a beautifully designed piece – the set and costume and sound design in her work are never tagged-on extras, but intrinsic elements, providing visual and aural storytelling that work alongside the word-free physical performance of our clown. 

We first meet Julieta at the start of the day – as the cock crows we could say. She arrives into her chintzy sage-green and cream sitting-room carrying her pet chicken, which she places carefully on the floor, and feeds. Although the chicken (a stuffed toy that of course can’t move) doesn’t eat, so after a while, with a sheepish look to the audience, Julieta helps herself to the little corn pellets. We see Julieta breakfasting on water and pills dumped down onto her gilt hostess trolley; Julieta resplendent in her neon orange leotard exercising on her vibrating exercise board (a particularly ludicrous and hilarious scene); Julieta making calls on her rotary-dial telephone; and Julieta listening to old Mexican favourites like ‘La Llorona’ on her transistor radio, or watching TV on her ancient set. And so the day passes to night, and another day dawns. At first, we are in Waiting for Godot territory – witnessing a play in which nothing happens twice. The day progresses much the same as the last (and many more before it, we guess). But then comes the shift. The TV breaks. A repair man is needed. Cue audience interaction. As with previous show Perhaps… (in which our clown heroine procures a bridegroom from the audience) there are no half-measures here. A man is chosen from the audience, and once he’s drawn into the action, he becomes an intrinsic part of the play. There are many marvellous moments with her new co-star, but I’ll flag up just one gem – a magnificent bolero dance, with Julieta in a tangerine organza frock and extraordinarily silly blue rubber-tube arms/rubber-glove hands entwining her new-found lover in an embrace, much to his startled surprise. These gloves, and other objects that play a crucial role in the dramaturgy of the piece, arrive on stage via an invisible second performer-cum-stagehand. Which reminds us that solo performers are very often not alone on stage!

Another, very different, solo show by a female clown is Look After Your Knees by Funny Women finalist Natalie Bellingham, seen at Pleasance Courtyard, which delves ‘into the space inside us left behind by time’, exploring ‘the pain and beauty of growing older’. As we arrive in the space, we see a performance area set with a circular rug, a chair, a standard lamp, a coffee table sporting a small fan, and a number of cardboard boxes, which will give up their contents over the coming hour. Nat enters and her lovely performance energy immediately imbues the room. There’s no fourth wall: she acknowledges people in the audience she knows with a nod and a wink and offers friendly (word-free) appreciation of people she doesn’t – for example, she admires the white marabou stole of the woman sitting next to me with a mimed ‘wow!’. And now she speaks: Isn’t this nice! Being here – all together. A joy. 

The next hour is indeed a joy – a delightful mélange of verbal storytelling, carefully enacted movement motifs, object theatre, and gentle clowning. It’s a show about growing up. About being old enough to know what you want (some of the time, anyway). About surviving bereavement. About re-evaluating the distresses of childhood. About the joys and the pains of adulthood. The sea is a central motif – we return to it in numerous ways over the hour. The child Nat wondering how the tide goes in and out, learning about the cycles of the moon. An older self walking off her grief barefoot on the rocky shoreline. A fantastical story of an encounter with a stranded whale, which acts as a metaphor for the need to accept that sometimes you just can’t make things better, all you can do is to be there. At the end, the marabou lady sitting next to me turns to her friend and says, ‘Well, it wasn’t really about dodgy knees or old age, was it? But I did enjoy it!’ The show is co-created and directed by eminent clown/physical theatre performer Jamie Wood, and this supports the notion that although we might be seeing just one person on stage, they are not standing alone.

Over at Zoo Playground, Duncan Hodgkinson invites us ‘To Dream the Impossible Dream’, in his first solo show Dante and the Robot – which is also directed by Jamie Wood. Here, the fourth wall is firmly in place, which is perhaps a dramaturgical decision intended to flag up our hero Dante’s extreme isolation. The year is 2087, and Dante lives alone in his bedsit with only his house robot – called She-bot, an amusingly lo-tech talking bucket – for company. He’s almost 25, and about to receive his first ‘upgrade’. We find out more about these upgrades as the show progresses – turns out that he and the bot will become symbiotic, so he’ll never again have any privacy, not even a private thought. His life is bleak: he hates his job, and his girlfriend has headed off to Japan, rejecting contemporary urban life in favour of walking up a mountain barefoot and living off foraged herbs and mushrooms. Dante finds mental escape from the distresses of his life through the writing of a screenplay about a Spanish knight who is not named, but bears a close resemblance to a certain battler of windmills! 

Like many sci-fi tales, Dante and the Robot is far more about our current culture and concerns than it is about the future. It references our relationship to AI, the climate crisis, the obsession with youthfulness, and the appeal of dropping out from the urban rat-race. Apart from the upfront reference to Don Quixote, we also note allusions to Brave New World, with the errant Japanese girlfriend taking on the role of the (Rousseau inspired) Noble Savage. The piece has a very minimal set and staging: white tape on the floor marks out the living area; with nothing but a thin mattress, an empty frame on the wall, and the She-bot in the space. So with very little visual stimulation, it all comes down to the actor’s skills – and luckily Duncan Hodgkinson is an able performer, who manages to juggle the very many strands of the story (and it is a pretty dense text) with a confident delivery, and a strong physicality. 

Over at Assembly Checkpoint, solo performer Sasha Krohn presents The Weight of Shadow, in collaboration with theatre company Flabbergast – an intensely physical, nay visceral, depiction of distress. The stage, set with a single bed, is drenched with intense green and blue lighting, and a thrumming drone fills the space. A foot, a leg, then a whole body emerges from the bed. Shaven-skulled, bare-chested, jerking and twitching to an intense electronic soundtrack – we are reminded of legendary physical performances by the likes of Derevo and Al Seed. The disturbed and disturbing figure moves from bed to floor to chair, a painful journey. A wrenching joust with a hoodie and again with a coat. An encounter with a mirror. Everything is jagged, on edge. Back to bed, and a dramatic switch to red lighting for a straps routine embodying a recurring nightmare, the twisting figure ultimately hanging upside down – a strong image. A slightly clunky transition back into the bed, and once again the sleeping figure wakes, and it all begins again. There’s no let up. It’s a physical tour-de-force by a very talented performer – a disturbing picture of mental illness, enacted with precision.

Back to Summerhall for Cosmos, a really unusual solo show – although like many of the shows discussed here, one created by more than one person. In this case, the team is aerialist and actor Ashtar Mullem (previously seen in the Total Theatre Award winning Palestinian Circus show B-orders) and co-creator and director, Clement Dazin. 

We enter the space to see Ashtar sitting calmly at the foot of the cream silks that are hanging down centrestage. The theatrical conceit is that we are joining her in a yoga and meditation class. She welcomes us, invites us to breathe with her, before sounding her Tibetan bowl, and getting out her stretch band. There follows a long autobiographical monologue, delivered while she bends and contorts herself into all sorts of extraordinary shapes. ‘Where is home?’ she asks. ‘My body was my first home,’ she continues. She tells us about her home, the holy city of Jerusalem, and its three religions – Jewish, Muslim and Christian – who all lay claim to it as central to their faith. She talks of her relationship to her grandmother, and the deals she struck, agreeing to go to worship if she got a trip to the market afterwards… She never names her grandmother’s religion, and makes it clear that she is mighty tired of the conflicts around faith in her country, Palestine. She is critical of the 1948 international agreements and subsequent events that have seen her country chopped up and shrunk, but although she is clear-cut in her beliefs, and expresses them in a forthright way, there is always levity and a wry humour in her delivery. Not least because the words come from an upside-down face poking through her legs, or from a body back-bended into a bridge position. When she turns the right way up momentarily, her face looks all wrong! Perception and point-of-view is everything… 

The show also includes two beautiful silks routines, one emerging from a scene in which a man in the audience is brought on stage to chop onions whilst she dances for him. (A man wearing a French beret, so for a moment I suspect he’s a plant, but I think it’s just coincidence!) Not quite Salome style, but she uses the silks to drape and veil her body, as she moves sinuously on the ground and in the air. The riffing on masculinity and men needing to cry (hence the onions!) doesn’t quite come off with conviction, and the ending of the piece feels a little odd, as she moves back into yoga teacher mode – but overall, it’s a beautiful piece of work. Great to see circus skills used so inventively. 

A Little Inquest Into What We Are All Doing Here describes itself as ‘a solo show in celebration of togetherness’. Josie Dale-Jones sits alone on stage behind a desk. She has had a difficult few years. She created a show called The Family Sex Show which aimed to explore issues around sexuality and gender with children, in a loving and caring way, but her intentions were misunderstood, and she found herself at the heart of an enormous storm: receiving threatening letters and emails accusing her of being a paedophile and suggesting she kill herself; becoming the subject of derogatory podcasts tarring her as a pervert; and having the show cancelled and her Arts Council funding withdrawn. All this information is presented in a series of monologues and litanies; delivered with clarity and conviction. She plays a section of the obnoxious podcast and sits stony faced as the swearing and insults pour forth. Ultimately, this is a story about survival. She calls out those who have done her harm (including Arts Council England) with courage and determination.

But although she sits alone, she’s not alone. She has her family (her parents are renowned theatre makers, co-founders of Hoipolloi), her company comrades (she is director of theatre company ThisEgg, creators of the brilliant dressed), and dear supportive friends. This show is a collaborative creation, with the team including ThisEgg co-creator Laurence Cook, and director Rachel Lemon. It is beautifully staged, with an excellent lighting design (being ‘in the spotlight’ an ongoing metaphor). There is a lovely shift in energy as Josie exits and re-enters in a gold lamé suit, giving us a fabulous tap dance routine to ‘That’s Entertainment’, replete with wings and crab-rolls – this girl can dance! We see in this routine a young, eager stage-school pupil looking forward to her career in the biz, unaware of the set-backs to come. Or we see an older and wiser artist, able to smile and shine beyond the hazards, and dance herself dizzy with joy. There’s another theatrical twist towards the end of the show – a Deus Ex Machina moment involving another person that I won’t spoil!

So really and truly, she is not alone. Had I known the subject of the piece, I might not have gone along to see it – I have a resistance to theatre shows about theatre. But this is something far more than that, a truly uplifting piece about resistance, survival and community.  

Theatre is by nature a collaborative artform, and the lesson from all of the shows seen here is that even if it’s a solo show, it is more often than not a team effort.

Featured image (top): Ashtar Mullem / Clement Dazin: Cosmos

The Edinburgh Fringe 2024 runs 2 August till 25 August, various venues. For further information on all Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows, see www.edfringe.com

Gaby Muñoz: Julieta, Summerhall, 1-11 August 2024 

Natalie Bellingham: Look After Your Knees, Pleasance Courtyard, 1-25 August 2024

Duncan Hodgkinson: Dante and the Robot, Zoo Playground, 1-25 August 2024

 Sasha Krohn and Flabbergast Theatre: The Weight of Shadow, Assembly Checkpoint, 1-25 August 2024

Ashtar Muallem / Clement Dazin: Cosmos, Summerhall, 1-11 August 2024

ThisEgg: A Little Inquest Into What We Are All Doing Here, 1-14 August 2024 

Food glorious food – here’s Dorothy Max Prior with an Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024 taster menu, featuring Sean Wai Keung with A History of Fortune Cookies, Traverse/Soho Theatre production My English Persian Kitchen, and Ugly Bucket’s Stuffed

Food and theatre have a lot in common, am I right? Both are about sharing – community through communion.

I’ve always been a sucker for shows that involve real-time cooking and eating. And there have been a fair few ’foodie’ shows seen over the years in Edinburgh, during the festival month of August. Off the top of my head, there was Geoff Sobelle’s Food a couple of years ago, which (in keeping with Sobelle’s anarchic clown persona) was a somewhat surreal banquet; and quite a few years earlier, Peta Lily directed Karola Gajda in My Polish Roots, in which a rather marvellous root-vegetable Borscht was made onstage whilst Karola’s Polish heritage was explored. Grid Iron gave us The Devil’s Larder, Curious were On the Scent, and Lemon Bucket Orkestra were Counting Sheep whilst inviting us to a wedding feast. Beyond Edinburgh, many and various artists and companies – from Kindle Theatre to Karavan Ensemble, Odin Teatr to Akhe, Leo Kay to Fevered Sleep – have invited us to feast our eyes and dine with them.

And now, in this 2024 festival season, here we are again. Come dine with me, say the theatre-makers!

For starters, here’s Sean Wai Keung with A History of Fortune Cookies. As we enter a small and somewhat scruffy basement room at Summerhall, we see a table with nine or ten chairs around three sides. On the other side, a young man stands stirring a batter mix. This is Sean, and he tells us that he is making fortune cookies, using the traditional recipe of flour, water, egg, a pinch of salt, and a dash of sugar. He has substituted regular egg for a vegan egg mix, for the sake of inclusivity – which is what sharing food is all about. And no need for fancy additions like vanilla, he says. Simple is better. ‘I’m like a fortune cookie,’ he goes on to say – by which he means that he is neither Eastern nor Western, but a hybrid. Fortune cookies, we learn, had their origins in Japan, but their current form was invented in the USA, and initially marketed as Japanese cookies – until Pearl Harbour, which meant all things Japanese were to be avoided; so they were re-branded as a Chinese treat. 

When Sean’s maternal grandparents came to Scotland from Hong Kong, they (almost inevitably, as it is what immigrants so often do) opened a restaurant. Well, a Chinese take-away, anyway. Sean remembers a childhood spent perched on the counter, putting the fortune cookies in to the customers’ carry-out bags. They were in a big box, up high, and he never questioned where they came from, they were just always there, a mountain of little gold-foil-wrapped treasures. In fact, most of the world’s fortune cookies come via Wonton Food Inc in Brooklyn, who make millions daily. He also muses on his childhood memories of the differences between the food cooked in the take-away (chow mein and sweet-and-sour chicken balls) and the food they ate at home (steamed sea bass and congee rice porridge). 

Sean shares some of his interview research on fortune cookies. Apparently, some people don’t eat them, just pull them apart to get the fortune. In fact, some people don’t even realise you can eat them! This food wastage would have horrified Sean’s grandparents, who grew up during World War Two, when Japan occupied Hong Kong, and food was scarce…

Once the batter is mixed, it is poured into little cookie cases and cooked – not too much, as it needs to be pliable. In the meantime, we are invited to write our own fortune cookie messages, for ourselves or for others. Sean passes on his grandfather’s comment that the fortunes shouldn’t just be bland pleasantries, but have a bit of bite to them. Mine says ‘Whatever is happening, it will pass’. We are each given a metal cookie case with its little oval of lightly cooked dough, and we try to follow Sean’s example, enclosing the folded slip of paper into a kind of heart-shaped chamber. Et voila, fortune cookies.

Thirty minutes has gone by in a flash, and it is only as we leave that I realise how much has been shared and reflected on: What it is to be neither one thing nor another, always the outsider, your heritage often not seen or understood; how language can unite or divide, and how being bilingual often means being not quite there with either language; how hard immigrants work to establish themselves within a community, using food as a bridge to acceptance. At the start, Sean is a little actorly in his delivery, but as the show progresses, he relaxes into his role as storyteller and cook, watched over by a photo of his dearly departed Chinese grandparents. A History of Fortune Cookies is a tasty little treat – a poignant reflection on the human desire to fit in, to belong.

Exploring much of the same territory – migration, the need to belong, using food to provide comfort in hard times and to bridge the gap between people – comes our main course: My English Persian Kitchen, seen at The Traverse. The play, written by Hannah Khalil and directed by Chris White, is based on the true-life story of best-selling cookery book author Atoosa Sepehr.

Once again, as we enter the space, food is being prepared. Performer Isabella Nefar is set up behind a pretty swanky food station, chopping a mix of herbs: mint, spinach, chives, parsley and dill. Meanwhile, onions are frying in oil. The lights dim, and she addresses us directly, breaking the fourth wall from the start: ‘Can you smell those onions? Good, yes?’ Onions make you cry; you can’t help but cry, she says, and there’s an ironic note in her voice… 

She is making Ash-E-Reshteh – Persian noodle soup. You get it everywhere in Iran, we learn, as our unnamed narrator tells us tales of her teenage years standing on street corners with friends, chatting over take-out bowls of soup. We also learn that women like our narrator – highly educated, modern Iranian girls – don’t learn to cook as they don’t want to be tied to the kitchen stove like their mothers. 85% of Iranian women are educated to university level: ‘Of course we don’t cook. We work. We are professionals. As successful as the men.’

Over the next hour we witness a masterclass in storytelling – a recipe that blends the verbal, the physical and the visual with the additional sensory delights of smell and taste. A potent mix, served up with aplomb. Cooking might require a linear trajectory, but stories don’t necessarily work that way – memories and associations freely jump around in this tale of oppression, escape, liberation, and forging a new identity through food-making. We move from present to distant past to recent past, and back to the present. The overhead lamp, the cooking knives, and the fridge at the back of the space are used brilliantly as props to the storytelling, as our narrator embodies the memories that are surfacing. At first there are small hints, then fuller details follow. As the hour progresses, disparate images and expressed thoughts link up. A childhood incident of falling in to a swimming pool as a toddler – ‘can’t breathe… going under’ – ties into an account of our heroine’s abusive husband strangling her; and then to the moment where, stepping up to show her passport before boarding the plane that will take her to freedom, she tightens her headscarf so as not to attract attention for immodest appearance. Once again her breathe is held for a horribly long time, the sensation of choking overwhelming. Once on the plane, the scarf is discarded, then deliberately left behind on her seat as she disembarks and jumps into a taxi speeding away to a new life. A life that is painfully lonely for a long time, but eventually it is food that forms the bridge to community. She may have eschewed cooking as a young women, but now she loves it, and loves sharing her Persian meals with her neighbours. 

The soup is smelling good, and she’s made the toppings, too –  kasbk and saffron water and mint oil and fried garlic. She cheats a bit on the kasbk, using alternative ingredients that she can get in the UK, but she feels that’s OK. Would we like a taste? Most definitely! We crowd around. ‘This is better than yesterday, where we had an English queue,’ says our narrator, or perhaps by now she has become herself, Isabella – and we laugh as she dishes out the bowls of Ash-E-Reshteh. Such a delightful show – so carefully constructed, so beautifully performed. A feast for the soul.

For afters we have Ugly Bucket’s Stuffed. Not a show about food, we are told – a show about food banks. A show about ‘the bad stuff’. It’s a take-no-prisoners show that uses rebel clowning to brilliant effect: political theatre of the best sort – loud, abrasive, feisty, funny. And hard-hitting – literally, as the five performers stomp and bang and shout and punch the air in synchronised bursts of frenzied deviant disco routines, with the electronic music-making and physical performance merging seamlessly. The set is made up of industrial shelving, tables, and food crates; with projections of key phrases onto a curtain dividing up the performance space, and screens above providing captioning. 

Verbatim interviews with food bank workers are delivered by performers combining lip-synching and BSL signing to the original audio recording, to hammer home the shocking tales of true deprivation. A situation that is no accident, we are told, but deliberately engineered to keep a shell-shocked underclass cowering, denied any agency in their own lives.

This is all played out in a number of darkly funny scenes inspired by the recorded interviews, including one in which complete envisceration is responded to with the arrival of a team of band-aid bearing officials; and another that transposes the line ‘fighting over crumbs’ into a fabulous battle between squawking and pecking human birds. 

A scene that really hits home starts with the words ‘Why don’t they make soup?’ projected on to the curtain, the related audio interview playing out the reasons why whilst the performers lie inert on the floor. I’ll confess to having thought this myself: there have been times when I’ve been low on cash, and soup is so cheap and easy to make, right? Well yes, it is if (like me) you were brought up in a home where cooking from scratch was the norm. Easy if you know how, have stock and herbs and spices to-hand, have use of a cooker, have electricity, are able-bodied and mentally fit, well enough to make it to the shops, don’t get stressed by the crying children at your feet… We take so much for granted.

After witnessing the two earlier shows celebrating the making and sharing of food, it is sobering to be reminded that this is not everyone’s life experience. But it should be, and if you want to help to make that happen, Ugly Bucket have those crates for food bank donations, and a leaflet they give out full of suggestions – with a couple of free tea bags thrown in. Make a cuppa for yourself and share one, they suggest. You can’t change the whole world, but start with yourself and the person in front of you, then the people two doors down. Little by little, we can change things. Yes, we can.

Featured image (top) Sean Wai Keung: A History of Fortune Cookies

Sean Wai Keung: A History of Fortune Cookies runs twice-daily 1-16 August 2024 at Summerhall, 12:15 and 12:50. See www.summerhall.co.uk  

Soho Theatre & Traverse Theatre: My English Persian Kitchen plays at Traverse Theatre, 1 Aug – 25 Aug 2024 (not 5,12,19) various times. See: https://www.traverse.co.uk/whats-on/event/my-english-persian-kitchen-festival-24 

It will then transfer to Soho Theatre London, running 16 Sep-5 Oct 2024.

Ugly Bucket: Stuffed is at Pleasance Courtyard, 31 July to 26 August 2024, at 14:25.  See www.pleasance.co.uk 

Bloodthirsty buffoons, a giant snail, a pit of fire-breathing snakes, an invisible orchestra, and a troupe of death-defying showwomen: Out There International Festival of Outdoor Arts and Circus 2024 had something for everyone, as Dorothy Max Prior discovered. Additional reporting by James Foz Foster

It’s the first night of Out There Festival 2024, and although this is predominantly an outdoor arts festival, we are indoors, in the Hippodrome, Great Yarmouth’s legendary purpose-built circus venue. It’s a beautiful space – even the toilets are beautiful, with their red-painted doors plastered with old circus posters in glorious technicolour. It’s ten minutes before the first show of the Festival, and there’s a buzzy crowd taking their places in the rows of red velvet seats rising up in steep tiers from the ringside.

So yes, we are here for a circus show, of sorts. But it’s not a run-of-the-mill one – there’s more here than mere tricks and turns (although there are plenty of those too). The show – merging theatre, circus, and performance art – asks: What happens to the showgirl when she grows up?

The answer, ring-mistress Marisa Carnesky tells us, is that she becomes a showwoman – with two ‘w’s, one for the ‘show’ and one for the ‘woman’. A showwoman, we learn, is ‘showing herself because she wants to’. And, vitally, ‘she never misses a show’. 

 Showwomen has been researched and directed by Marisa Carnesky – who was initially inspired by her trips to the National Circus and Fairground Archive in Sheffield – and created in collaboration with three others: performance poet and sword artist Livia Kojo Alour, ‘fire lady’ and suspension artist Lucifire, and Veronica Thompson, aka hair-hanger extraordinaire Fancy Chance. For the Out There Festival performances, Marisa, Livia and Lucifire are joined by aerialist and hair-hanger Jackie Le in place of Veronica Thompson, who has commitments elsewhere.

In the show, the contemporary performers explore their own showwomen circus and sideshow practices with reference to the legacy of forgotten and marginalised female British entertainers. Before we get going on the individual stories, there’s a nice little ensemble scene in which our showwomen act out a medley of telephone enquiries. They state the nature of their acts, their price, and their conditions of engagement. A repeated mantra emerges: ‘No, I don’t do that – but I know someone who does.’ 

The show weaves fabulous individual circus acts and death-defying stunts with autobiographical revelation, vintage film footage and stills, and musings on the historic showwomen that each have forged a connection to. There’s a gorgeous aerial hoop routine by Jackie Le, who is of Asian heritage, to the tune of Mae West singing, ’I’m an occidental woman in an oriental mood for love.’ All irony fully intended. The historic 1880s teeth-hanging aerialist superstar Miss La La is referenced in the show, although we get hair-hanging from Jackie rather than teeth-hanging, a truly treacherous practice! Marisa, replete in a pomposity of pom-poms, summons up the spirit of 1930s clown Lulu Adams. Livia – formerly a sword-swallower, but now confining herself to (merely) walking on blades and (gasp!) broken glass – channels the 1940s circus star and fakir Koringa, who may or may not have been Black – exploring the dubious heritage of the exoticised Black female body in circus and cabaret. Lucifire whip-cracks-away with breathtaking skill, repeatedly breaking the sound barrier in homage to 1950s Western skills performer Florence Shufflebottom, a sharpshooter and snake-charmer who started off in the family business as part of her father’s knife-throwing act, aged just 5 years old. 

And here’s a thing: in the audience tonight are members of the Shufflebottom family, including Florence’s son! The family’s contribution to the post-show discussion adds a wonderful poignancy to the evening. 

It’s a fabulous show, merging all of its various elements seamlessly to create something that is both an exposition of top-notch circus skills and a deconstruction of those skills; alongside an exploration of where the contemporary showwoman is placed in relation to the history of circus and sideshow. Why do women continue to put their bodies and themselves on the line in the name of entertainment? And are we still willing to break taboos? We return again and again to those two key maxims: She is showing herself because she wants to. And she never misses a show. The show must go on…

With the change of dates of Out There to the end of May, it is the Festival’s intention going forward that they have a show in the Hippodrome each year. And with a new circus and arts centre, the Ice House, opening at the 2025 festival, there will be an increase in indoor programming for the Festival from next year onwards. But for this year, the outdoor work remains at the heart of the festival, although there is also the usual programme of indoor shows and activities at the organisation’s headquarters, The Drill House. 

This year, Friday and Saturday were the key days for the outdoor programme, rather than the usual Saturday and Sunday of past years – with the Party in the Park nights kicking off on Thursday evening. As it was spring half-term holiday, Friday and Saturday saw the main sites for the shows – St George’s Park, Trafalgar Road and the Marina Centre Car Park – packed with family audiences out and about despite the squally weather. Thankfully, regardless of wind and occasional spots of rain, all shows went ahead, and a good time was had by all. Also, the move to late spring meant extended daylight hours – so shows continued well into each evening.

As always, the work presented was an eclectic mix of the traditional and the experimental – and much that, like Showwomen, merged the two. There was street theatre (some static and some promenade), circus of all sorts, dance, music, comedy, interactive game-playing – and some boundary crossing shows difficult to categorise!

Out There Festival has always been a strong supporter of street theatre of all sorts, from the traditional character-comedy shows that England always seems to have done well, to the more experimental imports (often from France).

In that first category came Festival favourites Cocoloco, who took to the streets with Mafia Wedding, a promenade show which tells the tale of a mafia boss with a pregnant daughter in urgent need of a groom (not to mention a bridesmaid or two, a priest, and a congregation) for a shotgun wedding. The show has been in the company’s repertoire for quite a long while as a two-hander, but here is given a makeover, with local community performers and students (many of whom took part in last year’s Cocoloco show, Shangri-la-la) returning to swell the ranks of the wedding party, resplendently dressed in pin-striped suits and furs, high-heels and hats. Cocoloco’s Trevor Stuart – whose longstanding and noble street theatre heritage includes many years with The Natural Theatre Company – was clearly born to play the mafioso father of the bride; and partner Helen Statman’s nine-months-pregnant Maria is a superbly pitched character. The shockingly hilarious ‘waters breaking’ scene in the middle of Yarmouth’s busy Trafalgar Road will stay with me a long time. And I did so enjoy dancing The Godfather waltz…

Also homegrown, and also a promenade piece: Jones and Barnard took us on their Golden Tour along the seafront drag, aided and abetted by another street theatre veteran, Paschale Straiton – who comes with excellent credentials, as her company Red Herring have created more than one fabulous performance-guide to a seaside town!  

We gather at the Marina, and are issued with colourful parasols, which we are instructed to wave in the air with gay abandon. The gaudy parasols are a nice touch, uniting us as a group, inviting amused glances from passers-by. Matt Barnard, dressed in a luscious violet velvet suit and a cheeky little hat, is our principal guide (or perhaps that should be mis-guide) – although he does pass the baton to the other two along the way. Gareth Jones and Paschale employ quick-change strategies to play a number of different characters, channelling Great Yarmouth’s history, real or imagined. Thus, Paschale morphs from Trixie Tarot the flouncy fortune-teller to a beard-stroking Charles Dickens who apparently lived locally for a while; whilst Gareth plays ‘Jerry’ – the whole of the Luftwaffe, no less – who bombed the local sea defences before being seen off by Dad’s Army, later becoming an amalgam of two famous local divers, our plucky performer taking an almost-naked dive into a bucket of cold water, assisted by a posse of strong men drawn from the audience. No mean feat in the low temperatures of the day, with the North Sea winds gusting! At one point on the journey, Matt disappears to re-emerge in wig and frock at the door of old music hall The Empire, having transformed himself into locally renowned opera singer ‘Lily’. We cross the road from The Empire to the seafront lawns, the other two joining ‘Lily’ in a fabulous rendition of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado hit ‘Three Little Girls From School Are We’. The trio then morph into rappers to big up the history of the Ice House and sing the praises of Yarmouth’s ice cream parlours (nice link there, lads and lassie). Jones and Barnard’s obvious parallel with Laurel and Hardy, in body size and master-and-servant clown roles, is honoured, as the two give us a Stan and Ollie song-and-dance number outside Britannia Pier.

It’s a show full of brilliant ideas, with very many great vignettes – although some scenes are stronger than others. The pace is a little wonky, and it needs a fair bit of ironing out, but it is important to acknowledge that it’s brand-new, and with this sort of work – promenade in public space with numerous interactions and costume changes – there is no real way to rehearse it other than to do it. It is site-specific to Great Yarmouth, so it’s not as if they could easily transpose it elsewhere and get the usual bedding-in that new street theatre shows receive in the summer season. But as it is full of potential and so clearly belongs here in Yarmouth, let’s hope Out There bring it back next year with more development time beforehand – it certainly deserves that!

Fraser Hooper brings us a very different sort of clowning to Jones & Barnard’s cheery repartee – solemn and silent, for the most part. He’s to be found Lost in St George’s Park, wearing a ridiculously over-sized backpack, carrying a map and looking bemused. Where is he trying to get to? Does he need help? As he turns the map around, he spins 180 degrees and careers into passers-by. Some people laugh, some look cross, some try to ignore him – which is ridiculous. How can you ignore a man with a backpack so big it takes up the width of the path? At one point, the silent mime speaks: a woman points out that his map is of the Lake District so not much use here in Yarmouth. ‘It’s the only one I have,’ he says with a sad shrug before moving on….   

 And yet more clowning, of another sort: comedian Paul Currie works a seafront crowd with fabulous skill and enormous energy. Objects play a key role, as Currie riffs wildly on one theme after another, moving on at a breathless pace. Gloves and glove puppets singing “She Gloves You’ and ‘Glove to Glove You Baby’. A boomerang croc shoe. A toy dog stuck onto a keyboard (‘the huskeyboard’). Sometimes no props are needed, it’s just his delighted delivery and our imagination that does the work: ‘the middle aisle in Lidl’ is enough to provoke roars of laughter, as is ‘asparagus pee’. He takes requests, and we end riding invisible dragons in tribute to The NeverEnding Story. A true clown – so upbeat and uplifting, and so very, very funny.

Over to the other end of the spectrum now, the darkest of dark humour, and an edgy French troupe called Compagnie Têtes de Mules (the Company of Mule Heads!) who brought us Parasite Circus, in which a bolshy female bouffon and her sulkily subordinate male companion torture and mutilate a whole troupe of puppet circus characters, all of whom have fabulous names (Pinky Bunny is a favourite). Our two bloodthirsty clowns start on the roof of their decrepit caravan, playing a broken accordion and the strangest looking tuba ever seen, heralding a show score with echoes of Carlos d’Alessio’s soundtrack to the film Delicatessen. They descend, mock the audience, conjure up the puppet performers, and the mini splatter-fest begins. Le sang! Le sang! Bring on the blood! A bendy box splits goes too far, until the poor creature is mercilessly rent asunder, an aerial rig becomes a gallows, and as one unfortunate after another meets their fate, puppet guts splatter the audience. Then, the ripped and torn remnants are unceremoniously binned – accompanied by demonic laughter. I have no idea what the company’s provenance is, or where they trained, but their classic bouffon techniques of laughing unashamedly at ‘death, fear, disease, difference and deformity’ courting a ‘desecration of common sense and the idea of political correctness’ are very much in the tradition of the work of Jacques Lecoq. Grotesque burlesque to the nth degree – a gruesome, carnivalesque success.

There’s most definitely a circus-sideshow vibe at this year’s Out There Festival, and this is echoed in Ava-go-go-ville, a mini festival within the festival on Trafalgar Road, between park and seafront. 

Within this site you’ll find a bar and numerous sideshow attractions, including Professor WM Bligh’s Circus Photo Tent, which invites you to have your picture taken as a circus act – be it knife-thrower, strongman, or trapezist; Willow Phoenix: Electric Hamster Racing (‘time to get competitive, only the fastest hamster will win’); and the Hocus Pocus Unsolicited Advice Bureau caravan hosted by self-discovery gurus ‘Tony’ and ‘Pam’ who are offering Speed Life Coaching and Public Art Therapy. There’s also the ever-popular The Loser’s Arcade – a phantasmagoria of ridiculous neon outfits, and ludicrous games (‘Roll up, roll up – everyone’s a loser!’). A favourite game features children racing in imaginary creature outfits, accompanied by the wonderful Ernesto on trumpet who plays joyfully out-of-tune accompaniments to the music drifting in from the seafront arcades. It all fits in perfectly with the Great Yarmouth seafront vibe, being loud, tacky, glittering and life-affirming. You can’t help but come out giggling.

Returning at night to Ava-go-go-ville, we encountered Paka the Uncredible’s Bag of Snakes, which has a loose connection to Paka’s ongoing interest in addressing the bad image Medusa has received over the years. This theme will manifest more in future developments: for now, Bag of Snakes is presented as a fun fairground activity – an ‘interactive pyro-kinetic, addictive and dangerous game experience for all shoe sizes’. It’s a take on the popular mole-thumping challenge – in this case, the ’snakes’ in the pit, known as The Medusa Misfits, light up, hiss and spit fire as contestants bash away at ever-faster-changing coloured pads. Great fun! Another night-time hit in Ava-go-go-ville is Miniscule of Sound’s The World’s Smallest Nightclub, which is exactly what it says on the tin – as close to a London clubbing experience as you’ll get inside a tiny booth with room for four people. You walk down a red carpet to be met by mirror-shaded bouncers and then led in to the soundproofed box with a live DJ behind glass in his booth, cheering you on. There’s very loud classic club anthems, and just about enough room to dance ecstatically. A joyous experience.

Elsewhere, live music played a key role in this year’s Out There Festival, with styles ranging across a full spectrum: crowd-pleasing party favourites and cover versions; rousing gypsy jazz, ska, and funk; and inventive, wonky, hauntological music made from found objects and played on old broken instruments… Talking of which, here’s Eric Tarantola and his Imaginary Orchestra – seen indoors at the Festival launch at Drill House on Thursday evening, and outdoors on Friday and Saturday. Eric is a tall Frenchman with a wild hairstyle, a gentle mime-clown who plays a homemade guitar/ banjo double-neck and a junk shop old trombone; these looped with the sound of wind-up clocks, metal cutlery and other random objects, which provide a percussive rhythm accompaniment. As the show progresses, he picks up an old mechanical clock from inside a battered suitcase and turns it around to reveal he has integrated a kalimba into the back, allowing him to play a melody to the clock’s beat. Very charming, very French – and like the aforementioned Parasite Circus, reminiscent of the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, as soundtracked by Carlos d’Alessio.

Still on the ‘wonky with homemade contraptions’ side of things come Rimski & Handkerchief with An Afternoon Out. Rimski sits on his Bicycle Piano, an old piano bedecked with artificial flowers, horns and hooters that is attached to a chain-driven tricycle base, pedalling the piano up and down paths and managing some very tight corners. Handkerchief plays the Double Bassicle – which is, as you’d imagine, a similar contraption for her double bass. They sing and play a medley of whimsical old songs: ‘I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire’ and, as the dark clouds gather above our heads, ‘Stormy Weather’. At seemingly haphazard moments, they change and shift direction. There are unexpected musical stops and key changes – the pair sometimes shifting in and out of the familiar melodies into (possibly) their own compositions, all perfectly timed to the stop-start and direction changes of their pedalling. Even when they sing ‘It’s Time to Go’ they are followed along the way by a smiling crowd who are ready to give them a push if they get stuck in a pot hole.

A firm favourite of many festivals is the musical walkabout troupe playing Eastern European influenced gypsy jazz and ska. Enter Portuguese troupe Kumpania Algazarra, the ensemble featuring a winning combination of trumpets, tuba, electric guitar and bass, drums and percussion. They were kept pretty busy throughout the festival. Wearing matching coloured hoodies and shades, they processed along the seafront, gathering a large and enthusiastic audience along the way. They played the park stages; they led off the Grand Finale procession; and they entertained at the late-night Festival Lounge at The Drill House. It was impossible to miss them! They are great musicians playing tight, funky versions of classic hits and Eastern European and Latin standards, interacting well with their audience – a definite crowd pleaser.

Another crowd-pleasing act is Loveboat – inspired by the TV series of the same name, and featuring two men dressed in short-sleeved merchant navy outfits, one playing keyboards, the other singing and occasionally playing guitar to backing tracks of rave/disco bangers, with a touch of 80s easy listening cheese, all accompanied by over-the-top dance routines and flashing disco lights. Loveboat is a heady brew, evoking a disco party night on a Mediterranean cruise ship featuring exotic cocktails. Like Kumpania Algazarra, they certainly sang for their supper: they played the main music stage in Party in the Park, a small intimate set in Ava-go-go-ville, and entertained the late-night revellers at The Drill House.

A thumbs-up too for the Young Out There (YOT) musicians, who had their own stage on one side of the park, but also took over the main stage now and again. Some of the acts we caught included Oasis-inspired Parallax, head-banging rockers Kuiper, and alt-rock/punk band Amourette. All three had endless energy, and held the crowd’s attention throughout their sets – and it was good to see the young bands take to the main stage with confidence, with such a supportive local crowd to-hand. One YOT act we sadly missed was Terran Burrell, who plays Shruti box, blending its drone sound with vocals to create a neo-folk set – with a few video game soundtracks blended in, apparently! But good to learn that there are young people out there at Out There choosing more unusual musical instruments and influences.

Music also, quite naturally, played an important part in many of the dance shows seen. Vanhulle Dance Theatre’s Olive Branch is performed by two martial-arts trained contemporary dancers who balance on roughly-hewn logs, playfully demonstrating a need to work together – there’s a message there, for sure. They merge expert equilibrist skills, stunning martial arts moves, smooth contemporary dance/contact duets, and gentle clowning to create an enjoyable and well-received show – which was developed in Yarmouth at The Drill House, with the support of Out There Arts. The music, composed by Italian jazz guitarist Domenico Angarano (who has previously worked with renowned choreographers Akram Kahn and Hofesh Schechter), was the perfect accompaniment to the skilled physical performance. 

An unexpected delight of the 2024 dance programme, also featuring a great musical score, was a small but perfectly-formed piece by two teenage artists, collectively known as Stacked Wonky, who hail from rural Somerset. 4 Minutes starts with our young male performers approaching from afar, walking down the centre of the road carrying chairs. These are placed behind a wooden table stood in the middle of the street. There follows a breathtaking ten minutes of beat-the-clock game-playing, alternating between collaboration and competition as the table is laid upon and leapt over, chairs spun like skipping ropes to be hopped over. In quieter moments, a gestural dance-theatre vocabulary of ticks and touches and shrugs is played out, T-shirts pulled up over heads, small glances exchanged. It’s a truly lovely piece of dance-theatre work, with the added bonus of a great live music accompaniment, featuring the beautiful electronic looping viola of Argentinian composer and multi-instrumentalist, Sebastian Tesouro.

Collectif Bim’s Place Assis (which translates as ‘a place to sit’) is a non-verbal performance set on a public bench. It’s a well-played piece of ensemble physical theatre, with the five performers imaginatively transforming the aforementioned bench into a car, boat or horse. There’s a fair bit of ‘school’s out’ type romping, with bags stolen and chucked around, and a lot of pushing and shoving and chasing round and round, all cleverly choreographed. It’s not going to change the world, but it’s a fun piece of work that goes down well with the audience.

Gorilla Circus are best known for their aerial work, but for this edition of the festival, they presented RPM – a dance, acrobatics and rollerskating piece set on a moving treadmill. Because of the unseasonably cold weather, it did feel hard to stay still and connected for a 45-minute-long static show, on in the park at 8pm. That said, the section seen (before the cold got too much, sending us scurrying to The Drill House) was a breathtaking display of acrobatic skill and co-ordination. And Gorilla Circus are to be applauded for trying something that’s new to them. There’s also the need for companies to produce work of different scales for touring – and as so much of their repertoire is large-scale, requiring a lot of rigging space, here’s a show that is more easily tourable, suitable for indoors or out.

Other circus companies seen at this year’s festival included Belgium-based 15Feet6 with Primus, a collaboration between Finnish Cyr wheel specialist Rosa Tyyskä, and the equally skilled Belgian Jasper D’Hondt who specialises in acrobatic bicycle and roller-skating. The 2020 lock-down forced the couple off the international touring circuit and into collaboration with each other – Primus being the result. And what a result – it really is a gem of a show, exploiting the performers’ skills beautifully. 

The pair are dressed in a kind of neutral school uniform (grey shorts/short skirt with white shirts) and the show plays out a love-hate competitive schoolyard friendship, starting slowly and building beautifully. In the beginning, they work the crowd, with two young volunteers co-opted to give out raffle tickets for a school-fete style tombola, the draw of which goes with a bang (literally). In a kind of parody of playground tactics, they each demonstrate their respective skills – aided, abetted or undermined by the other. Rosa zips around with extraordinary ease on her Cyr wheel; Jasper counters with a mocking hula-hoop act. Jasper hops on his bike and demonstrates some fabulous tricks; Rosa leaps on with him, shoving her behind in his face, or jumping up on his back. After lots of running jokes about their roller skates (Jasper’s are almost given away by Rosa in the tombola!), they don their wheels for a superb roller-skating doubles finale – fantastically fast and furious, demonstrating wonderful partner work, all rivalry now dropped and everything all about the two working as one. Primus was certainly one of the outstanding shows of Out There 2024.   

More rollerskating: Dulce Duca’s Unstoppable at first purports to be a one-woman show. Duca, resplendent in an extraordinary purple tulle outfit, channels her inner diva, strutting around full of herself and her accomplishments, demonstrating her club-juggling and roller-skating skills, and building a brilliant repartee with her audience – the juggling challenged a little by the fierce winds blowing, but she overcomes all obstacles. All obstacles, that is, except a late-arriving audience member who walks across the performance space and fussily seats herself, arranging her shopping trolley by her side. Then the fun and games start, as the annoying woman (who we soon realise is a plant – played by actress Tsubi Du) starts to disrupt the show – subtly at first, but later running into the space to grab clubs and jam them into her trolley. It all gets more and more farcical, and builds to a suitably ludicrous climax, with Duca and her combatant finally united in a ritual task – the funeral for the broken clubs. Unstoppable is a very sweet play on the challenges of performing outdoors, a space where anything can happen and probably will – wild winds, squally showers, dogs on strings, drunken old geezers, mouthy teens, crying babies, and bolshy old ladies with shopping trolleys disrupting the space! Street theatre queen Dulce Duca sees off all disruptions and reigns supreme. A master (or is that ‘mistress’?) class in crowd control.

Finally, we come to the The Final Grand Finale – the very last shows ever for local heroes The Insect Circus.

The Insect Circus was created by partners in life and work, Mark Copeland and Sarah Munro. The project has seen many incarnations, from painting exhibition, to travelling museum, to indoor show, to outdoor show. Very many different circus artists have been involved over the years and many are back for the grand finale – the show has been revived after a five-year hiatus, to be retired again after the Festival, this time for good! 

So here we are: this is the end.

This incarnation of the show has a cast of 25 drawn from across the country, and indeed from across the world. Many of the old favourites are back. Pippa Coram (all the way from Australia) is the hula-hooping Albina the Awesome, accompanied by a brace of lurid green praying mantises.  Simon Deville is Western skills maestro The Great Flingo, pinning the poor unsuspecting butterfly to a board to the tune of the ‘Bonanza’ theme tune, and ‘Don’t Hem Me In’. Marcos Rivas Farpon is Mr Maroc, taming the wild and beastly Sylvester the Stag Beetle with a dash of classic matador Paso Doble, assisted by Flamenco dancer The Delightful Dolores. Phoebe Babette Baker performs as Phee and her Bee on the tightwire (when the wind dies down for long enough, anyway); and Ashling Deeks brings Dungo the balancing scarab beetle out of retirement. Dungo’s trainer, Peggy Babcock IV, is played by Persephone Pearl, who also reprises her turn as the back end of a pantomime horse (at least, I think it’s her in there – it’s hard to tell). But there is also the next generation: aerialist Vicky McManus is returning with her daughter Saskia Poulter for the Mothball Bolero and other aerial acts; and two of the younger members of the team play aerialists Molly and Dolly Lollipop, performing a very lovely doubles hoop act. Mark is ringmaster, pulling it all together, and Sarah plays Nursey, on hand in case of insect bites and stings (Pemma Ricardo, aka Constance Courage, keeps control of the Vicious Vespa Wasps, but they have been known to run amok). Nursey also does her own short act as a warm-up before the main show – The Mighty Mites Tea Party, a fabulous little puppetry show in which the eponymous mites behave very badly indeed. 

We must also give a mention to the fabulous Sybil the Snail, a giant beast who, unlike the other creatures of the circus, will possibly not be sent off to be cryogenically frozen in A(n) Ice House, but will live on as the Out There Arts mascot…  

It was Sybil who led off the grand parade for the Community Carnival on Saturday evening, in celebration of the Ice House, and honouring 20 years of The Insect Circus – a wonderful finale to Out There Festival 2024. The Festival’s musical troupes, including Kumpania Algazarra and classical string-quartet Bowjangles, joined forces to provide a rip-roaring live soundtrack; artists and volunteers at the Festival processed from The Drill House to the park waving colourful flags; and The Insect Circus creatures took their final final bows before being ceremoniously retired, leaving the children and grandchildren of the company in the ring hula-hooping.

Perhaps, muses ringmaster Mark to us afterwards, the grandchildren will one day take up the baton and ‘unfreeze’ the insects. Until then, it’s the end of an era for The Insect Circus, but the start of a new one for Out There Festival – the Spring slot having been well and truly christened.

The show must go on, the show will go on – here’s to May 2025! 

Featured image (top): Compagnie Têtes de Mules Parasite Circus. Photo James Bass Photography

This year’s edition of Out There International Festival of Outdoor Arts and Circus ran 30 May to 1 June 2024. 

More About Out There Arts – National Centre for Outdoor Arts & Circus

Great Yarmouth based, but collaborating internationally, Out There Arts – National Centre for Outdoor Arts & Circus is a registered charity and Arts Council funded National Portfolio Organisation dedicated to supporting excellence in the development, creation and presentation of new and high quality artistic work, delivery of outstanding circus and outdoor arts festivals, and events for and with diverse local communities and wider audiences.

Out There Arts shares Great Yarmouth’s vision to become the UK Capital of Circus. Their focus on circus and outdoor arts grows naturally from this seaside town’s rich performance heritage, providing an accessible medium to support their work.

www.outtherearts.org.uk 

Fresh Street at Out There Festival 2025

Fresh Street – The International Event for the Development of Outdoor Arts is back for its fifth edition on 28–30 May 2025. This flagship professional meeting bringing together key European and international players, artists, programmers, producers, researchers, and policy-makers from for three days of dynamic discussions and stimulating exchanges on how we can imagine the outdoor arts of tomorrow.

Fresh Street #5 is co-organised by Circostrada Network and Out There Arts in the frame of Out There Festival, in partnership with Outdoor Arts UK.

https://www.circostrada.org/en

More About the Ice House

A Grade II listed building of brick construction with a thatched roof, the Great Yarmouth Ice House, once one of a pair, is now the only one of its kind left in the country. 

Out There Arts have a vision to transform it into a National Centre for Outdoor Arts and Circus. This imaginative and creative use of the building will further develop the town’s reputation as the capital of circus in the UK as well as further link the town’s fishing and circus heritage.

All funding is now in place, with the project supported by the Architectural Heritage Fund and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council England, Great Yarmouth Borough Council, and the building’s former owners Towns Deal Brineflow.

Capital works began in February 2024, and is scheduled for completion in March 2025, in time for Out There Festival 2025.

See www.outtherearts.org.uk 

The Insect Circus Museum

The show may be finished, but The Insect Museum lives on! Now in permanent residence at a house in Great Livermore, Suffolk IP31 1JN. Visits by appointment. Contact Mark Copeland on: theinsectcircus@gmail.com