Electric lighting powered by a bicycle, an albino ringmaster with a white top hat, a woman dressed as a man dressed as a woman in beard and an old tutu…living in a cage: The Swedish ‘Cirkus Cirkör’ brings the bohemian and the bizarre to the West End with a new show which delights and surprises. Inside Out, mixes dance, mime and audacious acrobatics to spin a story of love and circuses accompanied by the sultry tunes of Irya’s Playground - a laid back showgirl and her band of troubadours. It is an unusual evening, and one that develops the style of the new wave of circus which came out of France in the 1990s. Rougher than Cirque du Soleil, this is like Archaos or Cirque Imaginaire but with more drama, more dance and slightly less shocking effects. It excels with many of its set pieces, and fascinates with it sultry music, dance and clever use of film, but having crossed so many boundaries occasionally struggles to add up to more than a sum of its parts.
      There is a story to this show: in amongst the juggling, the tightrope walking and the dance is a lost soul who is pulled on to the stage by the circus troupe. We see her develop an engorged heart, which she holds in both her hands whilst looking plaintively at the audience. Later she emerges on to the stage dragging a red rope onto which is tied her heavy heart, now enormous enough for people to perform acrobatics off. It is very hard to know what this is all about, but the programme encourages us to believe that the show tells the story of a woman who is afraid of love and that by discovering how circus performers embrace their own fear, she learns a lesson. The simplicity of the theme and the difficulty in divining it begs the question of why Cirkus Cirkör bothered with any story at all, especially when the music, the design and the circus choreography are so brilliantly sophisticated. Except, that when we see the lost soul perform her stunning pole acrobatics the audience is genuinely moved. We are not just shocked, surprised and impressed by her extraordinary skill – the way she climbs a vertical pole from the stage and allows herself to fall head first stopping suddenly inches from the ground – but we are moved by the way she dances on the pole, flashing us her plaintive look. Her characterisation makes us care far more. In the same way when two performers take to the trapeze, they are characters acting and the trust they must rely on to perform their tricks creates a poignant metaphor for friendship as well as a gripping spectacle.
      Angela Wand was spell-binding as the crazed old bearded dancer in a tutu. Was she meant to be a fairy? I am not sure, but her tightrope walk across a the top of a line of champagne bottles was a magical evocation of the precariousness of high-times. Andre Farstard’s turning, twisting, looping ballet inside the arc of a spinning steel hula-hoop was like nothing I had ever seen before, original and impressive. But the two trapeze artists, beautifully costumed in faded old-style circus uniforms, firm friends in the drama of the show then completely at one on their high swing is the act that will stay with me longest. Kirja Tuulikku Jauhiainen and Sanna Kopra, both very young women, have been working with each other on acts like this for over ten years.
      The dramatic element that the director, Tilde Björfors brings to the circus gives the acts a powerful life beyond their moment, despite the slight foundations from which they transcend. The music by Irya’s playground, with its casually exotic faded cabaret feel, was the perfect accompaniment and they are an act that developed alongside Cirkus Cirkör in Sweden. And despite the fact that there are moments where the drama seems mystifying and absurd, and times when a juggler is nothing more than a juggler, there are fabulous surprises in this show and hints that the use of drama with circus could one day provide something more genuinely profound.
Charlie Taylor