And For My Next Trick...

In complete contrast to Tuesday's intimate and goose-pimply performance, last night's entertainment was the frenetically garish Le Grand Cirque, which is on at the Theatre Royal in Brighton all this week as part of an ongoing international tour. Despite the French-sounding name, Le Grande Cirque is mostly made up of Chinese acrobats, flanked by a troupe of statuesque white (possibly Russian?) female dancers. Frantic displays of eye-popping physical feats are interspersed with gentle comic relief in the form of a (thankfully not too scary) mischievous clown, who converses with the audience in some kind of mumbling faux-French, pulling people up on stage to have a laugh at their expense. One poor guy was made to strip to the waist and do sexy dancing - though he was fairly game about it. I've seen a fair few acrobatic shows in recent years, yet never cease to wonder at the extreme capabilities of the human body, as demonstrated to impressive effect last night. The costumes and staging were quite literally dazzling, and while Le Grande Cirque may lack the subtlety and humour of neo-burlesque performers like The English Gents or Mantrix, they put on a good show, and it's hard not to get caught up in the glitzy excitement of it all.