Roll up for the Kama Sutra of circus acts!
CIRCUS troupe Cirque du Soleil are exploring their feminine side at the Albert Hall. That means a mostly female company of exotically clad acrobats telling a story based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest about an enchanted island.
If you think parallel bars mean a pub crawl, then it’s probably not for you. The rest of us can expect glittering gymnasts performing an array of gravity-defying stunts to the beat of generic world music.
Our heroine, Miranda, is dropped in a supersize fishtank and swooshes artfully inside. Surfacing, she turns out to be adept at handstands. After an interval in which you may pay £1.90 for a packet of crisps before returning to seats from £25 (in the gods) to more than £100 elsewhere, we are treated to buff men leaping off a seesaw. Airborne Chippendales, you might say.
The piece de resistance is surely the Balance Goddess, who picks up a set of 13 palm leaf ribs with her feet to create a giant mobile (not phone) balanced on her head.
You could say Amaluna is a Kama Sutra of circus skills, and earnest programme notes assure us the show embodies a female worldview. There is certainly less macho dare-devilry than usual, but a panto dame clown and her pirate suitor with floppy sword lower the tone.
There are minor mishaps, too, which in some ways make the spectacle more exciting. But it’s a largely flawless performance with portentous rock music played by an all- female band of preRaphaelite headbangers.
Cirque’s old tricks do still impress.