Red Bennies isn’t the circus by any stretch but through shows such as The Contortion and Hand-balancing Spectacular! it can give you a small one-hour long taste.

Starting 15 minutes late, the exuberant female host Giuseppe came out revving the crowd up before getting the show started and calling out the performers.

I didn’t expect to be particularly impressed by the acts but I was. There were many highlights, a teenage girl hand balancing, lifting her entire body up and balancing on one arm, legs moving around even touching her own head. Audience members on either side lent forward in amazement as well as awkwardness that she would fall, but she didn’t. Meanwhile I was pretending to stretch seeing if I could even touch my toes.

There was young aerial contortionist Mim Conyers, swinging around almost touching audience members, performing to the song Life on Mars.

There was a dance-a-thon with the host and a man Joe plucked out of the audience that went on too long, which had you wondering whether they were running out of acts.

But they weren’t, where some of us might find it tough to even complete a dance act well, Jacinta Rohan can do it while spinning a hula hoop on her toes.

At Red Bennies, make sure to get in early, the seating is impractical with a number of benches near the stage and limited seating upstairs. For the 90 or so people that were there, there wasn’t room for everyone.

If you don’t want to splurge going to Circ du Soleil, or see something unusual then this could be for you.

It might even have you trying to touch your toes.

Another Contortion and Hand-Balancing Spectacular! different performers will show on Saturday the 8^th of October at 7pm at Red Bennies.

In Bluey, Spencer uses a monkey puppet Alfred to tell the story of his father, a British RAF Sergeant sent off to Iraq for six months in 2003.

Spencer goes through the journey that his father went on overseas with Alfred’s deep voice memorably bellowing “I’ve been a chef for over 20 years and here I am monitoring a Paki guy cooking nine hours a day.”

At home Spencer tells of the family conflict that came from him protesting his father being in the armed forces.

The performer doesn’t try and be either a ventriloquist or an expert puppeteer, but for the first ten minutes where the monkey is a novelty all eyes will be on the puppet.

Spencer jokingly asks the audience to imagine that they are in Iraq, that the stool is a bunk bed and that the stage is surrounded by desert.

Spencer is also good at moving the puppet, even having it hilariously lie down on the bunks.

With the help of guitarist Brett playing thrash- metal raid sirens, you do almost feel like you are there.

The show isn’t hilarious, but it isn’t trying to be. With Spencer and Brett’s good banter there are no lulls throughout.

The performance is informative and Spencer’s confident stage manner ensures that the short and sharp piece (50 minutes) is laced with laughs .

Spencer picks a member of the audience to put on his father’s protective army suit that the soldiers frustratingly had to put on multiple times a night and wear. With the chosen audience member on the night taking forever to take their shoes off and adorn the army pants, Spencer remarked “have you got locks on those shoes?”

Situated in The Loft of the Lithuanian Club in North Melbourne the show deserved far more audience members than there were. If you go just remember to undo your laces first.

If you are an up yourself business man that loves to spend your early mornings at King St, there is every chance you’ll be in Hannah Williams show. In a refreshing cabaret, Williams sings, dances, acts and for the most hilarious effect, takes you behind the scenes of the stripper world, mimicking both customers and her fellow dancers along the way. She mixes between playing Roberta, Bambi, Bok Choy, Diamond and her own stage name that is Mercedes Benz.

Held in the Revolt Melbourne studios it was like a scene out of Blues Brothers 2000 (that’s the bad version). The studio is surreal, it has a jungle feel with fake rocks on the walls and velvet couches everywhere.

Williams performs up on stage with the rows of audience in darkness. There is a stripper pole with a disco ball spinning in the background.  The room was packed with 50 odd people, middle aged women and younger men seemed the norm.

With one-way conversations at the audience, Williams says that it’s easier to get a guys money by talking briefly about that weeks footy scores than to talk dirty. She also shows the awkwardness of having a cold while dancing on stage and that strippers can fall asleep at work too.

Williams makes mistakes at times, but this is her first full length show. For an hour remembering countless stories and doing the voices isn’t easy.

The first half was hilarious and while the humour doesn’t drop off (the middle-aged ladies laughter will attest to that) the second half makes you feel slightly sorry for Williams and those in her profession.

She describes the fear on a night out that a guy is looking at her because he recognises her as a stripper. While the other girls and Bok Choy particularly were in relationships while performing, Williams says she cannot do it.

At the end Williams gets changed on stage, removing her makeup. It is a reminder that strippers are normal people, they enter the real world after their last dance too. The show was a mixture of entertaining, clever and awkward. The thunderous applause that Williams receives shows she has won the audience over too.