A lengthy session of desperately unfunny clowning sets alarm bells ringing at the beginning of this 20th show from international circus behemoths Cirque du Soleil. “Shut up and start contorting!” whispered my friend sharply and it’s advice that director David Shiner could usefully have borne in mind throughout.
The clowns reappear with the frequency of a recurrent nightmare, which means that the gaps between the spectacular bits are far too long. Shiner could well rethink the structure of the whole show, not least the fact that a three-hour running time from 8pm is all wrong.
The explanatory programme notes contain a lot of abstract nouns but no one comes to Cirque’s extravaganzas to brood on concepts of “strength and fragility”. Rather we want to watch highly skilled performers do the sort of things that are scarcely possible, and in this respect Kooza is a triumph.
There’s the unicyclist who goes around with, of course, a woman balanced on his head. Then there’s the four-person high-wire act complete with bicycles, chairs and sword fights. As if this weren’t enough, there’s the circus stunt to end them all, a Wheel of Death so visceral that it gave me motion sickness. I hardly dared to watch when the two performers ran round the outside rim of their wheels. As Stephen Sondheim so nearly put it, Send off the Clowns.
Until February 14 (0845 401 5045, royalalberthall.com)
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