Circus: Beyond

Circa
Created and directed by Yaron Lifschitz
Lighting designer Jason Organ
Performed by Robbie Curtis, Rowan Heydon-White, Bridie Hooper, Kathryn O’Keeffe, Paul O’Keeffe, Skip Walker-Milne and Billie Wilson-Coffey

(★★★★)

Regal Theatre
Until January 21
 
As the primary colours combine to produce the whole palette, everything a circus acrobat does is made up of combinations of Catch, Hold, Lift, Balance and Spin; Beyond is a pure expression of those elements.
We quickly learn that gender is there to be inverted. Beyond’s strong man is a woman, and its men are putty in her hands.
There’s beauty too. Hooper takes to the air on straps as Amanda Palmer sings Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees; Billie Wilson-Coffey climbs the tissu to Camille O’Sullivan’s lovely take on The Ship Song.
Paul O’Keeffe provides the highlight of the show. He folds a cigarette paper into a tiny shape and spins it on the tip of his finger like a miniscule propeller. Spectacle and span dissolve into a moment of infinitesimal wonder.
It’s an ensemble full of circus stars, and a gasp-eliciting night of circus art.


Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

Performance: How Like an Angel

Circa and I Fagiolini

Directed by Yaron Lifschitz

Musical director Robert Hollingworth

Winthrop Hall

February 29, 2012

There were high expectations for How Like an Angel, the union of circus and vocal music which made its world premiere in Winthrop Hall on the auspicious 29^th of February.

Auspicious because the show, a co-production of PIAF and the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, has been commissioned as part of the celebrations attending that other phenomena of this leap year, the London Olympic Games.

It wasn’t just Brisbane’s cutting edge circus theatre Circa, the celebrated English vocal ensemble I Fagiolini and the producers who assembled at Winthrop with high expectations. 

We got everything we came for, but, ultimately, How Like an Angel was something less than the sum of its wonderful parts.

I Fagiolini too often seemed to be in excess of requirements. This came to a head when they burst into a piece by the Zulu composer Bheka Dlamini in the style of Joseph Shabalala and his Ladysmith Black Mombazo. The singers performed it with enjoyment and enthusiasm (right down to a little unassuming ululation), but what it meant, and what it was doing there, simply escaped me.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian