Cirque Berserk

★★★★☆    Skills and thrills

Edinburgh Playhouse: Sun 1 – Tue 3 Feb 2015

Breathtaking to the last, Cirque Berserk delivers the circus thrills of the big top on the theatre stage for three nights only at the Edinburgh Playhouse.

With almost 30 individual performers, this is a circus which is able to bring all the expected delights. Contortionists, knife throwers, trick riders and aerialists each bring their individual skills. A mountain of chairs is climbed, many different balances gained and fire is spun in the dark.

Aberdeen-born Tweedy the Clown at the Berserk Circus

The berserkers’ armoury of full-on thrill excitement does have a few gaps. But when it comes to the big set pieces everything works fine. Most notably in the Globe of Terror, the Cirque Berserk’s signature act, which lives up to its name as motorbikes whizz around inside a tiny spherical mesh cage.

Great circus performances are about the drama of the reveal. Get that right, and the most mundane trick will turn into a memorable event. Get it wrong, and the feats of skill which carry a very real risk of failure will appear mundane.

So it is that both the Cuban Tropicana Troupe with their springboard routines and the acrobats of the Timbuktu Tumblers come across as something quite special.

Framed by the wide proscenium arch, the Tropicana’s springboard antics send them right up into the wings in a manner that seems destined to go horribly wrong as a pair of burly men jump from a high ladder onto the springboard – sending a young lad spinning up into the air to land perfectly, every time.

The Timbuktu Tumblers have a similarly usual routine: jumping through hoops. But with the added dimension of a strongman balancing act, which allows the acrobats to jump through the gaps in the tower of precariously balanced humanity.

plenty of fire

A second half limbo routine from the tumblers is equally well presented, building up to a finale involving plenty of fire and a bar set so low that it can sit on a pair of Coke bottles.

Not all the other acts are as slickly done. Individually, the aerial artists have a certain skill level. But in this kind of staging when they perform in pairs on the straps the unison work needs to be perfectly together. And the silk work just lacks the sensuality or sense of danger that a truly skilful artist can bring to it.

And for all his bluster, Toni the knife thrower’s routine is just too rushed to create the impact it might.

Yet for each of these performers who doesn’t intrigue as they might, there is another to capture the imagination. Odka, the contortionist who emerges from a bottle to fire a bow and arrow with her feet. Or Germaine who juggles balls – and fire – with her feet.

And finally – or rather woven through the whole evening as he appears several times in each act – there is the clown: Tweedy. His comedy and slapstick routines appear naive, but hide real skill and an understanding of comic timing.

Whether the Scottish-born clown is mimicking the exotic dancers, playing catch-up with his hat, falling from ladders, destroying his lovely red bike or skittering along the slack rope, he knows how to play his audience with gentle understanding, to get the loudest laughs.

You might not be able to smell the sawdust, but when the stage is lit – or more often darkened – for full theatrical effect and the pumping soundtrack turned full on, then Cirque Berserk deliver a solid circus show in the comfort of a theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes (including interval)
Edinburgh Playhouse, 18 – 22 Greenside Place, Edinburgh, EH1 3AA
Sunday 1 – Tuesday 3 February 2015.
Full details and tickets on the Playhouse website: http://www.atgtickets.com/shows/cirque-berserk/edinburgh-playhouse/

ENDS

Tags: circus, Cirque Berserk, Cuban Tropicana Troupe, Playhouse, Review, Timbuktu Tumblers, Tweedy