Circus Tricks – review

Riverside Studios, London
1 out of 5 1
    • The Guardian,
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Circus Tricks, Riverside Studios
Lilly Papaioannou (Xiu) in Circus Tricks. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

When composer Michael Henry and librettist Adey Grummet's opera began life, it was as a five-minute so-called Lite Bite in Tête-à-Tête's 2008 festival entitled The Agony of the Knife-Thrower's Assistant. By the following year it had developed into a 30-minute piece. In its latest emanation, it has expanded to two hours, including a 20-minute interval. The result feels like a thin film of material spread over an ocean of tedium.

  1. Tête à Tête
  2. Circus Tricks
  3. Riverside Studios,
  4. London
  1. Until 25 March
  2. Box office:
    0208237 1111
  3. More details

The characters now comprise not just knife-thrower Jack and his assistant Tanya, but also Alice the trapeze artist, Xiu the contortionist, acrobat brothers Tom and Jemmy, a trick pony called Barney and a performing elephant called Patience. In one of many fey gestures, the latter is visualised as a grey cut-out pinned to a board whose noisy interventions are realised by the hard-working instrumental ensemble Chroma under conductor Gerry Cornelius.

In its current form, Circus Tricks offers no dramatic viability, and precious little drama of any kind. In Act 1, the characters rehearse their regular routines, simultaneously complaining about their professional or personal unhappiness; occasionally, they all complain together. In Act 2, they continue exactly as before until their frustrations finally spill over into intentional or accidental violence, at which point they exchange or acquire new partners, achieving some sort of smiley resolution as the show dithers to a halt. Henry's musical ideas sometimes start promisingly, then drift into anonymity. The cast does what can be done with terrible material. Barney is played with scarcely credible loyalty by Christopher Diffey, wearing a silly horse costume and performing the most lamentable pseudo-equine routines with no apparent sense of their utter ridiculousness.

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