Skip to main content

Circus 1903 review – super-luxe vintage brilliance

Royal Festival Hall, London
A global cast of performers let their talents do the talking in this nostalgic, high-octane circus show

Roll up, roll up and lose yourself in a reverie of hipster vintage nostalgia! The delightfully enjoyable Circus 1903 professes to be a return to circus’s “golden [Victorian] age”, but is in fact a super-luxe reboot (with super-luxe ticket prices) for 21st-century tastes.

The concept is simple: one by one, without a sniff of sweat or sawdust, daredevil acts from all corners of the globe – Mongolia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Russia, France – dressed in gorgeous Victoriana (ruffles, muslin, waistcoats) come on stage and do their jaw-dropping, gasp-inducing thing. All to a booming orchestral soundtrack heavy on the drum rolls. There is a whip-fast juggler, a mind-bending contortionist (the Elastic Dislocationist) and a succession of vertiginous tumbling and balancing acts, each introduced by US master of ceremonies Willy Whipsnade (David Williamson).

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/36aShWM

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Knives Out review – Daniel Craig goes Columbo in Cluedo whodunnit

Craig grills an all-star lineup of suspects when a wealthy novelist is found dead in Rian Johnson’s sharp, country-house murder mystery R ian Johnson unsheathes an entertainingly nasty, if insubstantial detective mystery with his new film, Knives Out. Back in 2005, his debut movie Brick (a high-school thriller) paid tribute to the hardboiled noir genre. Now he does the same thing for cosy crime, although there is nothing that cosy about it. Knives Out has a country house full of frowning suspects, deadpan servants and smirking ne’er-do-wells and an amusing performance from Daniel Craig as Benoît Blanc, the brilliant amateur sleuth from Louisiana who annoys the hell out of one and all by smiling enigmatically, occasionally plinking a jarring high note on the piano during the drawing-room interrogation and pronouncing in his southern burr: “Ah suh-spect far-wuhl play!” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2L0NKO4

Thirty Years of Adonis film review: sexually explicit gay drama mixes porn and pomposity

1/5 stars The line between soft-core porn and pompous art-house cinema grows ever finer in the seventh feature by writer, director and producer Danny Cheng Wan-cheung, also known as Scud. Intended as a philosophical statement about the meaninglessness of life, Thirty Years of Adonis instead comes across as a badly misjudged piece of sensationalist filmmaking. God’s Own Country review: gay love story set in the Yorkshire countryside The film revolves around aspiring gay actor Adonis Yang... from South China Morning Post - Culture feed https://ift.tt/2qgQkop

Tracey Emin decorates Regent's Park and a celebration of Islamic creativity – the week in art

Emin and others survey the state of sculpture, Glenn Brown takes his decadent imagination to Newcastle and artists offer northern exposure – all in your weekly dispatch Frieze Sculpture Park Tracey Emin, Barry Flanagan and John Baldessari are among the artists decorating Regent’s Park with a free survey of the state of sculpture. • Regent’s Park, London , 4 July until 7 October. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IDCpPV