Nobody actually says Don’t try this at home but when acrobats are jumping from pole to pole, swinging from each other’s feet and throwing chairs maybe that’s taken for granted. Director Yaron Lifschitz and the Circa ensemble have brought a show of remarkable physicality and verve to this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. At 7pm at the McEwan Hall seven athletes use their bodies in fantastic ways to tempt gravity and provoke oohs and ahhs from the audience.
The Australian group combine strength with precision, allowing them to perform feats that are not merely impressive displays of human power but also demonstrate complete muscular control. Performed on two smaller stages placed on the main stage, there is no speaking, just action and music, with added trapezes, vertical poles and hanging drapes.
Different sketches and sequences follow each other, demonstrating the inventiveness and flexibility of the human body. Or some human bodies. Or these particular human bodies, belonging to Bridie Hooper, Rowan Heydon White, Rudi Mineur, Kathryn O’Keefe, Paul O’Keefe, Skip Walker-Milne and Billie Wilson-Coffey.
It’s not all amazing strength displays, although there’s a lot of holding bodies out sideways half way up poles, standing on heads, contorting into poses I wouldn’t have thought were possible. One of the most successful segments involved nothing more than an acrobat and an A4 piece of paper. Another uses a Rubiks cube. Imagine completing one of those fiendish puzzles – hard enough you might think. Now imagine doing it with someone else standing on your shoulders. Or looping themselves about your neck.
One memorable scene has the cast picked up like items of rubbish by Mineur. Somehow he carries his six colleagues off-stage without dropping anyone, or collapsing. Much of the show takes place at high altitude, provoking a lot of amazement and whooping from the audience. There are also big fluffy animal costumes and a few less successful sketches, such as a character caught in large orange rubber bands which isn’t as inventive or as impressive as the others.
The show includes a raucous Sex Pistolian rendition of My Way with accompanying dangerous moves such as sliding quickly down poles headfirst towards the ground, and somehow stopping a foot from the floor. People catapult themselves across the stage, throw friends, hang by the head from fellow trapeze artists. It looks extraordinary and is very different to other fringe shows. It ended with a standing ovation.
When I got home I did consider a gentle swing on the light. Be careful, this show may make you want to run away to the circus.
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/circa-beyond
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