15.09.08
£10 to see a Cheeky Girl stabbed
Me, P and D ended up at teh circus over the weekend. The new Moscow State show was on in Leicester, with all new acts “never before seen in Western Europe”. And they also advertised the “World’s number 1 juggler”.
Cool! I didn’t know Gatto had changed nationality and was now touring minor cities in the UK.
For some reason Clurb was not keen to go so we left her grumbling at home instead.
Anyway we got there pretty much bang on time, straight in to ok seats.
The show kicked off with a pretty cheesy show of all the cast. There was an MC but he wasn’t very annoying despite the red tailcoat. He also didn’t walk at any point I remember. He just scooted around on his unicycle (he did juggle 5 “candles” whilst on it at one point). It wasn’t looking good as some bored looking performers limply did a minor bit of their act in turn.
But then the acrobats came on to do the first act. Cue whoops and “woo”s from most of the audience. And they were excellent. Lots of classic flips and twists and more. A good start.
There were 2 repeating acts. First were 2 clowns. One in civvies, the other in toned down makeup but still with the huge shoes and silly trousers (oh how we chuckle at silly trousers). But they were good too. Nice little skits which did make the crowd laugh. Falling down trouser stuff and boxing gloves to the groin went down very well with the under 12s.
The other was a stage magician who was, well, ok. Just. One or two of his bits were awfy obvious to anyone who’s seen any magic tricks explained. Nearly as bad as the disappearing man from “Aluminum”.
But then other stuff was quite nifty and slick despite us knowing how it was done (pretty much every trick). The best bit was when he got an assistant who was the spit of the Cheeky Girls to hide in a small box and then stabbed it rather a lot. Lembit must have been holding his breath.
Other acts included a weird crossbow act. I thought it would involve apples on heads a lot but that only happened at the end. There was another acro bit which involved a tiny girl being hurled around by butch russians. A flying trapeze segment notable for the flyers smacking into the tent at one end of their swing and a female “flyer” whose only jobs seemed to be a: eye candy, and b: hooking the free trapeze (after someone had “flown”) to get it ready for the next guy to fly. She didn’t even dismount in an exciting way.
And juggling? There was a good bounce guy. Very snazzy sci-fi theme and a bit of bouncy prop (a metal foldy thing that he bounced balls on and uses springs to kick balls up from the edges of the base) that seemed to not work as often as it did. He was sound enough but nowhere near the top 10 jugglers I’ve ever seen. Still he did finish with a 9 ball cascade (bounced). But hardly the “World’s number 1 juggler”.
Oh and there was a unicyclist (not sure if it was the MC in a different costume) who did some quite hard ultimate wheel shenanigens.
The show as a whole was pretty darn good. The skills and presentation these guys and girls had were nifty. The live music wasn’t awful. There weren’t too many desperately cheesy moments (clown picking on a bald man, listless russian girls dancing and clapping whilst patently hating every moment of it).
Definitely recommended (but get one of their half price vouchers – they’ll be in chippies and corner shops galore).
Have fun.