NO FIT STATE CIRCUS: SABOTAGE
Circus has been reinvented in recent years. I grew up up with lion tamers and liberty ponies, now all gone thankfully, but it has taken some time for modern circus to come of age. And Brighton Festival has certainly been a champion of the art, programming companies from around the globe to come and display their great feats of derring-do. I have enjoyed many of them although I do sometimes find that the more extreme acts of jeopardy can make me very anxious and give me tummy ache.
I first saw No Fit State Circus some years ago and was blown away by their alternative approach. You can sling almost any definition at them, non-binary, gender fluid, punk, goth and even totally bizarre, all have a place. But what really defines them is that they do everything with such a wonderful sense of fun. The tricks are no less exciting than any other company, the acts are accomplished, extreme, sometimes scary, but the presentation is utterly charming. Their look is delightfully shabby, costumes ranging from vintage to civvies, sometimes slick but often rather charmingly ramshackle, as if the designer had ram raided a charity shop.
But there is nothing ramshackle about the show which is a masterpiece of timing and team playing. Never was the term multi-tasking more apt. Every single performer is involved in the complexity of performing their own skills, moving sets and props and rigging the complex pieces of apparatus. Ropes are made taut, acrobats lifted and dropped by counterbalancing the performer with another performer… it is at times difficult to decide what to look at.
Then there is the live music, so very good that I would happily turn up just hear the band, which once again is made up of those performers who minutes before may have been dangling above the platform.
The action is fast paced, one section sliding into the next, tumblers, trapeze, a very bouncy tight-rope, actually not tight at all but rather amazing. And there are moments of gentle magic, two of the male performers walking slowly across the ring in black dresses, one in huge heels, performing acts of balance and flexibility.
The whole is rather amazingly beautiful, filled with joy and laughter, and there are too many stand-out moments and performers to list them all, and they all deserve mention. So I will leave it at that, get along, do not miss out, No Fit State in my view eclipse Cirque du Soleil. (Oh, and I didn’t get a tummy ache!)
Andrew Kay
8 August
The Level
Rating:
