Cirque Surreal is a new circus from the same people who operate the Chinese State Circus and the Moscow State Circus and is currently in Preston Park, Brighton for the month of May. I was able to get hold of some guest tickets and went along last week to see what all the fuss was about. I went to the Chinese State Circus last year and wasn’t overly impressed, it seemed over long and rather uneventful, with lots of unnecessary clapping the order of the day. I had no intentions of repeating the experience until my girlfriend persuaded me to go as she loves a good circus. I wasn’t expecting much, and perhaps thats why I was so impressed, although there is no denying some of the stuff these guys were doing was pretty spectacular.

The stage set was a Dali inspired surreal backdrop and the costumes were highly bizzare and very colorful. Apart from that, there is nothing surreal about this other than the fact its a circus. At least half the acts were nothing overly special either, you got your basic clowns, amusing enough in parts, a guy flinging stones around, a failed footballer juggling footballs, a man whose special skill seemed to be wearing huge elaborate costumes, acrobats standing on each others heads etc. All good fun, but not especially spectacular.

What did stick in my mind however were 3 acts specifically, which make the show well worth attention, for various reasons. The first of these was an African character whose special skill seemed to be blowing a whistle. He could also kick himself in the head. He was dressed in traditional African costume and ran round the room high fiving people. He did little else. I question the mindset behind the person who came up with this idea, as it seems to go along with the typical 1930’s view of Africans being people who like to dance and perform for people wearing straw skirts and are generally not especially intelligent. Perhaps he was supposed to be a modern day clown, but it felt like they were trying to give us a ‘taste of Africa’ with the African animal sounds, and classic African stereotype. Funny for kids, bit embarrassing for anyone else.

The second was a guy who literally danced a repetitive basic jig around the stage for about 5 mins and then opened up his arms and demanded applause. Was he being serious? He reminded me a little of Ali G attempting to break dance toward the end of the 90’s. Either way the applause given demonstrated the politeness of the English very nicely. Unintenionally (perhaps) hilarious, for all the wrong reasons.
Final act of mention was superb, two guys in cage like rings, what they did is hard to describe but it did involve them freefalling from the top of the big top, walking on hands, on a tube, at the top of the big top, and multiple near death experiences. Well worth the price of admission alone.

As my girlfriend said, I could have just watched the various acrobats for an hour and a half, but, stereotypes aside, the overall show was great fun and worth visiting.

Cirque Surreal play in Brighton until 20th May and then tour the country. Tickets are £22 each, but look for half price vouchers in local pubs and cafes.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Theatre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.