Circus                                                                By Kinetica                                                       The Big Top                                             February 9th

The audience shuffles nervously into the big top – half Shakespeare buffs and half circus fans, they know what they’ve come for. A sell out at the 2014 Fringe with their show REVEAL, Kinetica have felt the weight of expectation on them for their take on arguably one of Shakespeare’s more ‘fun’ and accessible plays. The lights dim and our four protagonists take the stage with a campy mime and nasal narrator to set our scene – this is not what we expected.

In the words of the Bard himself, “the course of true love never did run smooth,” and neither did the performance.  The acting from the lovers is crudely camp – all wide eyes and dancers’ smiles – and while the comedy is dark, it’s also a tad crass (when Shakespeare penned Midsummer he probably didn’t envisage quite so much twerking). However, true to their genre, the Lovers are fabulous acrobats: tumbling and leaping, performing complex stands on each other that will take your breath away, and they manage to convey the majority of the dialogue through their circus pieces with more beauty and depth than words could muster.

A Shakespeare play without words is a very tricky thing. There is a small element of narration and “ATHENS”/”FOREST” signs to orient the audience, but scarce else. If you are not familiar with the text it is possible to find yourself slightly off the garden path, and heading out in to the woods. This is particularly true of the performances of the Mechanicals – alternating between very limber builders and Athenian pole dancers.

Strangely, the street slang and booty popping Oberon and Titania do make a raucous pair and give the performance a completely different slant. Domme and daddy (and female) Oberon leads Puck on leash, bound and ball-gagged while taunting the fairy Queen Titania – a queen in more ways than one.  Their dynamic is such a departure to the traditional that it’s frankly jarring and stings of high-school pantomime. After the performers settle in to their repartee and flash their own circus credentials, they begin to look a little less like bickering teens.

Truly though, all the camp acting and bad jokes aside, the most captivating element about this show is the transformative power of their aerial circus skills. Looking up, it’s an isolated, introspective space where each character is allowed a moment, a seemingly eternal moment, to act out their desires, emotions and their element of the storyline. Each turn, and swing and leap takes paints an emotive picture in the spotlight against the tent ceiling. Without giving too much away  – it will leave you with a radically different perspective of this traditional narrative.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be showing at The Big Top theatre until February 15. Tickets are available here.