Put together a troupe of tumbling acrobats, Klezmer musicians, trapeze artists, jugglers with a dozen oranges and a Jewish wedding inspired by Chagall and you have Circus Klezmer. In an extraordinary show at the Theatre Royal, Adrian Schvarzstein and his Spanish company from Barcelona entertained a capacity audience with a non-stop, flat-out, full-pelt comedy circus which starred virtuoso musicians, breathtaking gymnasts and only the merest amount of recognisable speech. But we understood all we needed to, for a wedding is always a wedding, even if the bride has abseiled down a silken rope doing the splits. Some of the guests were hauled in from the audience, wearing all the wrong clothes and needing a cabbage for a hat.
The action happens in a village, somewhere at some time: it is neither the past nor the present. But the lack of an obvious chronology, geographical context or comprehensible language is the point. The actors mime, dance and tumble to brilliant effect, expressing simple human emotion against the plangent melodies with their Hebraic flattened thirds and fifths.
In recent years, circus has acquired new status and companies such as Cirque du Soleil are attracting very different audiences to those for whom lion tamers and bareback riders were once standard fare. We begin to realise just how much skill, training, talent and hard work goes into making us gasp, laugh or look for a handkerchief. Circus Klezmer does it all - and to music.
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