Smash it!

This is a clever circus show with many of the elements you would expect to find in a big top circus focused into the Fairfax Studio. There is splendid, warm audience engagement at the beginning to elevate everyone’s mood, tightrope walking, slack rope walking, trapezes, tricks and pratfalls, clowning and really excellent balance, floor, rope and strap work. All this is stitched together by charming smaller episodes including a recreation of a variety of statues, Charlie Chaplinesque hat handling, and some characters who pop up at intervals to continue their story.

The company including Angelique Ross, Celso March, Debra Batton, Leo Pentland, Mozes Heawood, Sharon Gruenert, and Spenser Inwood devised and preform the show. They each have their own speciality and they work together as a daring, committed company to create some thrilling and surprising moments.

The lighting design does a great job focussing the audiences’ attention and adding its own commentary on the action. The music is an essential element of the show with the multi-instrumentalists providing a rich soundscape with everything from rock rhythms to tension invoking violin. The costumes of patterned track suits and nude coloured body suits are used creatively with many different combinations.

The backstage crew under stage manager, Stephen Burton ensured each act’s technical requirements such as mats and ropes and safety requirements are quietly and sensibly put in place.  

This is the circus! People doing impossible things, demonstrating their skills and taking risks for our pleasure and delight.

Ruth Richter

Photographer: Ben Capp