A plain and unadorned space, a circle drawn on the ground, a light, a chair. And a body. A human body. A bag of bones.

The body belongs to Thomas Monkton, seen previously at the Edinburgh Fringe and the London International Mime Festival with The Pianist. But Only Bones is a very different kettle of fish. Where The Pianist gives us stage full of kit and sees the performer explore a clownish relationship to objects – a grand piano, curtains, chandeliers, sheet music – Only Bones strips almost all else away and objectifies the body, Monkton reducing himself to modelling material. Except of course he’s not – with every clever trick, every brilliantly executed physical vignette, we are simultaneously enjoying seeing the body and its parts twisted and turned into all sorts of things, whilst yet appreciating the (super) human effort behind it. Ultimately, it’s a show about the human body, and being human.

So, what happens? We start off with socks, seemingly three socks on three feet, perched on the chair seat. But it is not three feet, it is two feet and a socked hand, in a kind of stand-off. Enter the other hand, bare, and things get even more bizarre. Now we have two hands like scuttling spiders. And a hand that tortures the other hand with red nail varnish. Now we seem to be looking at the back view of a headless man, his (jazz) hands enjoying a dance above his non-head, illuminated by an electric blue light.

Ah yes, the light! The bulb in the lamp above the performer’s head – or non-head –  changes colour with each small scene. A deep maroon for underwater swimming (jellyfish or human!), for example. At first a straightforward change of state for each vignette, but then Monkton starts to subvert and play with this, getting rid of the deep water tank he can’t escape from by changing the bulb colour… There is also a lovely point at which the lampshade becomes a head, and a baby Anglepoise is cuddled – a perfect puppetry moment.

In many ways, the show is puppetry. No puppetry of the penis (thank the lord) but puppetry of the head, face, hands, arms, feet, legs, spine… This man’s ability to contort and manipulate his body is breathtaking.

There’s sound too – onomatopoeic moos and baaas in a silly (and very lovely) scene in which animals combine to form new hybrids, with some help from the audience. This moves into a kind of reverse beat-boxing or body percussion, in which sounds from inside have a forceful effect on the body. Eventually, all is resolved and here we are, looking at man, just a man, who is looking back at us.

Only Bones is a delightful show delivered by a highly skilled performer (who certainly knows his way around his own body) investigating the place where the circus arts of clowning and contortion meet puppetry and object theatre.  Bravo, that man!

High up in the space, curled up around a rope, is a body, and as the show starts, the body descends, falls with a thud. A confused young woman in a smart black trouser suit and red shirt looks out to us.

I remember, she says… I remember…

She remembers crossing the road, her mobile vibrating, it’s her brother and she doesn’t want to talk to him, she finds it hard to talk to him, she’s bought some socks for her dad because all the ones he has have holes in them, people say he drinks too much, she can see this guy Gil who she likes. Her first thought is: someone has screwed up; her second thought is, oh it’s me that’s screwed up; her third thought is, I don’t want Gil to see this…

I remember…Grace, I’m Grace, she says.

Grace, we learn, is many things – a lover, a mother (of twins who she gave up for adoption), a photographer. The narrative circles around a snapshot of one moment in time that explodes outwards into a world of possibilities.The story is not obscure – it becomes obvious pretty early on that our heroine has been the victim of a road accident; that the one moment in time is the moment of impact with a truck ‘the driver’s eyes, terrified…’ But where is she now? In recovery? In a coma? Facing the moment of death? Throughout the piece, Grace can be heard repeating the mantra: I didn’t expect think this would be me. We none of us think it’ll ever happen to us…

Grace is a solo circus-theatre show performed by Emma Serjeant, previously of Circa and then Casus. With Casus, she co-created the Total Theatre Award shortlisted show Knee Deep, but has now left to pursue a more thoughtful brand of circus that has something to say about the big issues. Grace first started life as the Casus show Jerk, but has now been substantially redirected and enhanced by Emma and her collaborators, director John Britton and a video-maker and sound-designer. It is a richer, fuller show than it was – although part of me misses the rawness of that first outing as Jerk.

It goes without saying (although I will say it anyway) that with a performer of this pedigree, the circus skills are exceptional. She climbs, swings, falls, tumbles, bounces up in breathtaking volleys, engaging with floor and air magnificently. But the unique selling point of this piece is not the skills – fabulous though they are – but how those circus tricks and turns are employed in the telling of the tale.

The narrative is both a story in its own right, and a way of reflecting on and facing head-on the dangers and fears of being a circus performer. In their employment in the telling of Grace’s story, and in the parallel exploration of the dangers of the artform, the various items of circus kit are used brilliantly. Aerial equipment offers the opportunity to swing high, wild and free, and to play on and with the fear of falling and crashing; hand-balancing equipment is wobbly, so she plays with balance and with throwing herself off-balance; tiny hoops can contain and trap the body, so are an excellent metaphor for a body trapped in a nightmare physical experience.

There are other, quirkier circus skills employed too: the speciality object-up-the-nose trick is here re-invented with balloons in a flashback party scene of simultaneously evokes the out-of-control experience of drug-taking, and a suggestion of hospital breathing tubes and feeders forced into a struggling body. The sounds of laboured breathing feature in the soundtrack, merging nicely and echoing the real-time breath of the performer who is throwing herself full-pelt around the space, again tying together the story of Grace and the story of Emma…

The text is a mixture of live and pre-recorded text, mixed in with the composed soundtrack (ambient sound, samples and intense, beat-driven electronic music). The onscreen video work is in part a reinforcement of the narrative, but mostly operates as a scenic tool, creating a backdrop to the live performance. It is often showing us hazy black and white images of what could be human figures (echoing Grace’s slipping in and out of consciousness in her hospital bed), this alternating with vibrant washes of colour – reds or violets – that reflect Grace’s mood swings and levels of consciousness.

The relationship with the audience is interesting. At one point in the show, she leaves the stage to take Polaroid photos with audience members that capture the moment, the here and now and liveness of this event, and also reinforcing the core ‘snapshot moment in time’ motif running through the show. Police incident tape is also put to good use…

Grace is many things. The character we are presented with is a complex and not always loveable one, although we love her honesty and her growing self-awareness. As an example, she relives her thoughts about cheating on her boyfriend at his own birthday party, and asks herself: What sort of person am I? What sort of person does this? Here and now – on what might be her death bed – Grace is re-evaluating her life, growing, changing. Where there is life, there is still the possibility of personal development, of soul work, regardless of what is happening to the physical body.

The show is an excellent example of how circus skills and theatre narrative (expressed through words, images and actions) can be successfully brought together.

A brave and beautiful piece of work – and a show that anyone interested in the space where circus meets theatre should see.

A drag king punk gig about architecture and idealism? Bring it on! Cuncrete sees Rachael Clerke assume the identity of Archie ‘I invented the Barbican’ Tactful, architect, who becomes the vessel for her exploration of the domination of our built environment by Great White Males. She is aided and abetted by a posse of performance artists turned punk rockers – Eleanor Fogg aka johnsmith the banker on guitar; Anna Smith as Little Keith the landlord on drums; and Josephine Joy as Johnny Jove on bass. Johnsmith is his usual elegant and restrained self, even when Archie tries to embroil him in the classic singer-and-lead-guitarist rock-out. Little Keith is a cartoon drummer – bashing the crash cymbal constantly, and breaking out into ludicrous piss-take drum solos. Johnny Jove is a bit of a Steve Jones – a cheeky chappie with an eye on the ladies.

None of them have ever been in a band before, and the sound is often reminiscent of the stage-2 tower block punk of Sham 69 or Eater. Names that’ll mean almost nothing to anyone under 50. Anyway, they sound the way people always imagine punk to be, fast and thrashy for the most part, and cheerfully chaotic – here’s three chords, form a band and all that. Brash, ballsy, macho. Occasionally, with their bass-led songs, they sound less like the boy thrashers and a bit more like one of the trailblazing female punk bands – Slits, Raincoats, Kleenex. That I like.

So the music and the punk-pop personae are there to serve a rant about the modern city. Its phallic towers, its brutalist estates, its overpriced housing… The lyrics are cut-ups of texts filched from a wide ranch of sources, from JG Ballard’s dystopian novel about city living, High Rise, to the writings of the Brutalism Appreciation Society. Grayson Perry, Hugh Hefner and George Bernard Shaw are also cited, apparently. At one point, the dulcet tones of Margaret Thatcher – one of her bone-chilling speeches on home ownership – ring out in the tawdry room. Archie opens his arms and welcomes her in.

Rachael Clerke has stated her intention to create work that is funny and political  at the same time – which this is. I enjoy Archie’s words and the delivery of the text – crisp and clever satire, a damning indictment of our contemporary attitudes towards architecting our environment and providing enough homes for people to live in. I love a lot of the stage setting and the design: the beginning where the band’s lead singer bursts through a paper screen is fabulous; Archie’s costume in general, and ludicrous ‘wings’ in particular, fantastic; the dragging onstage of a concrete-mixer is a wonderfully surreal moment.

By creating a band that is a fictional construct, Rachael Clerke and the Great White Males are following in the footsteps of a succession of art-school bands and art projects using music as a medium, Throbbing Gristle started as a pretend band created by COUM Transmissions for the opening of their Prostitution exhibition; David Devant and His Spirit Wife first saw light of day as an MA degree show for the Narrative and Sequential Art course at University of Brighton. Die Rotten Punke are Australians playing a fictional German punk band, parodying the rock and roll lifestyle. These three very different forerunners all share aspects of their content and form with this project.

It’s a highly enjoyable experience although I feel that I want more – I want them to really be the drag king punk band they want to be – to hone the musical parody into something a little cleverer than jokey pseudo drum solos. In the way that the text is somehow both Archie, and Rachael’s parody of Archie, in one body – the thing itself and the commentary on the thing – the music could also function in this way. It could be a damn good girl punk band whilst parodying the bad boy punk bands. Sometimes it is close to being that, but it could go further.

But the foundations are strong…  Cuncrete is a great (art) concept, executed with panache. Open the champagne, someone!

The space is so inviting! A large Spiegeltent, with a bed on a platform in the middle of the circular space, a kind of giant lampshade above it. Soft night-time lighting, in gentle blues and ambers. All around the edges of the floor space, little beds and cushions. Behind them, rows of chairs covered with fluffy rugs. I feel like bagging one of the wee beds, but magnanimously give that over to two small girls, and take one of the fluffy chairs instead.

Bedtime Stories is, as far as I know, Upswing’s first children’s show (although previous work by the company, such as the delightful reimagining of Red Shoes, has often been family-friendly) – and what a pleasure it is to see a company with such sound circus / physical performance skills taking on the creation of a show for very young human beings.

Visually, it is a delight. The ‘paper lampshade’ cube is used as a four-sided screen for video and animation, which includes a very lovely cut-out shadow theatre story (of The Princess and the Nightingale). The interaction between the live performer playing the little girl on the bed and the animations is delightful. The physical work in the show is excellent – a mix of aerial silks, acrobatics, tumbling, and exuberant whizzing around on wheelie chairs. I love the way the white silks over the bed look like bedsheets, climbed up in an escape from the bed (and thus bedtime) that is both physical and metaphorical.

There is a strong narrative – seemingly simple, the story of a little girl who won’t settle down to sleep, preferring instead to romp with her imaginary friend, a boy called Three. It is made more complex by the back-story of her mother’s immensely busy life and thus stress around the bedtime story reading – the ‘mummy needs you to go to sleep’ syndrome that all parents in the audience will recognise with a sigh. Which brings us to a small problem in that show is pitched at very young children (age 2+ says the publicity!), but the narrative floats a little between age groups, and the mother’s scenes in particular are far more suitable for older children and adults. I feel it would be a stronger show if it rooted itself more firmly in one camp or the other with its storytelling. Who is the show really for? If the aim is to make a show for very young children, then the narrative needs editing back, and the show running time cut back by at least 15 minutes. If the company feel that this is the story they want to tell, then up the age guide to 6+.

Although embodied in the physical action and visual imagery, the narrative does rely quite strongly on spoken text, which is very hard to hear (at least on the occasion that I saw it, early in the run at Edinburgh’s Circus Hub). This problem may well be solved by using mics, at least for this particular venue. It is a perennial problem for circus-theatre, as few performers are equally skilled in circus skills and voicework. The male performer fares better than the two women performers in projecting his voice out to an audience in the round in a large space with a lot of background noise from both inside and outside the tent, which would be a challenge for any actor – but all three could do with more development in this area of their work.

Despite these reservations, I really enjoyed the show – it has a lovely visual aesthetic; exuberant performances from a personable, engaging and talented trio of circus artists; and it is tackling a dilemma for parents and children – the issue of so-called ‘quality time’, and the child and parent’s attitude to bedtime and separate needs – that is something worth reflecting on and discussing within a theatrical context.

The company has taken the time to create a loving and caring environment for young audiences, and recognise (as have pioneers like Theatre-Rites) that even the youngest amongst us deserve to be given performance work of quality.

What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her… If you wanna be my lover… Stop right now, thank you very much… It’s not unusual to be loved by anyone… Hey, the Macarena!

What’s your feel-good throwback song? The song that reminds you of the good times? Write it on a piece of paper, make the best paper plane you can, and throw it onto the stage…

And their off! Dancing and tumbling and talking straight out to the audience, Silver Lining take no prisoners in an energetic and exuberant start to their show Throwback. Within five minutes of arriving on stage, bouncing round like a litter over-excited puppies, they have us eating out of their hands. And that’s it for the next hour. I’ve seen a lot of shows where those on stage show us what it’s like to be at the best party of your life – in this one, we feel part of the party from the word go. And they do the fabulous Patrick Swayze lift from Dirty Dancing – on top of a three-person tower! – in the opening sing-along sequence of the show, so even if I hadn’t been completely sold from the start, they’d have had my undying love from that moment on.

Using a format that, in the interest of fairness it needs to be said owes a little something to both Traces by Quebec’s Les 7 Doigts, and UK circus hit Pirates of the Carabina, Throwback is a kind of confessional coming-of-age circus show that intersperses skill-based acts with the sharing of little vignettes of autobiographical material – stories, songs, and more. But actually, do I care if I’ve seen something similar(ish) in format before? Not at all. This troupe of six super-talented young performers (graduates of the National Centre for Circus Arts, aka Circus Space, and nurtured by London’s premier circus venue, Jacksons Lane) make it all their own.

Skills-wise, we have a boy on the trapeze, who I think might be called Tom, who starts his solo slot off very nicely with a neck-hang, eliciting gasps from the girls in the row in front of me. Tom is a sweet soul who seems to have an obsession with horses. In a line-up yes-no game they play out twice in the show, Tom tells us he had a Pony in my Pocket and wanted to be a horse when he grew up. The line-up game is used to tell us what age everyone is (22! 24!), whether they prefer tea or coffee, whether they are single or not, whether they prefer cats or dogs. An Irish girl with an auburn pony-tail and a lovely smile sings the song Smile acapella, a favourite in her family of singing sisters, before going into a very nicely executed hand-balancing act. An energetic break-dancing boy who might be called LJ channels the spirit of Michael Jackson and does a good strong straps act to Come Together. Sam is the dark and moody-looking one who tells a heartbreaking story of his mother getting in to debt to buy her children a piano, who then gets cheers from both the ladies and the gentlemen of the audience when he takes his shirt off for his elegant hand-balancing act. The girl from Berlin in the red dress has tales to tell of her love of traditional German tunes. She is also a great foot juggler, using not only the traditional rola-bola, but an assortment of colourful umbrellas. Number six is the Scottish guy (cue cheers from the audience), a beefy base in an AC/DC T-shirt who confesses to a broken heart brought about by his own infidelity. His frustration gets played out in a Chinese Pole act in which the pole seems to bear the brunt of his frustration.

Inbetween and around the solo acts are lovely little moments of ensemble work. Tom’s trapeze act ends with him sliding down from the trapeze over a human slide. He also gets a moment that needs to be mentioned where he plays air guitar on a hoop…

 Throwback is a show full of upbeat energy, humour and a sound body of circus skills. They may be young, but they have already learnt how to use what they are good at in the service of the show, rather than just performing tricks for the sake of showing off the skill. Great team work, lovely stage presence, plenty of humour, a whole swathe of cute and clever pop culture references.

I had The Time of my Life, thank you very much.