Nights at the Circus

Lyceum Theatre – 11/4/06

Based loosely on a novel by Angela Carter and adapted by the much lauded Kneehigh Theatre Company ‘Nights at the Circus’ presents the audience with a rich tapestry of oddballs, freaks and the seamy vein of circus life circa 1899.

The plot, such as it is involves a journalist ‘Walser’ ably played by the fantastically named Gisli Orn Gardarsson. He is determined to debunk as hokum the wonder of the age a winged woman named Fevvers. (Cockney for feathers - geddit?) Instead, upon meeting her he is entranced, falls in love and then runs away to join the circus she is in as a clown.

Within this production was much to praise, not least the direction and the marvellously creative set pieces. The overall look of the play was both sumptuous and dirty and for the most part brilliantly realised. The stage craft itself is worth the price of a ticket.

Many of the actors too shine out through the grime, the best and most fearsome of which was Ed Woodall as a malevolent, wife beating, sadistic clown. Amanda Lawrence as his companion ‘Mignon’ was also fearless and had the finest singing voice in the company, ringing like a bell in an abandoned church. Andy Williams, playing an American circus master and carrying a pig (puppet) was entertaining and acutely inventive, so much so that you didn’t know whether to watch him or the pig and wanted to miss neither.

Unfortunately, what this play does fall victim to is the script. The programme notes catalogue how it was arrived at, usually though improvisation with the actors. Indeed the programme notes mount a spirited defence of this process. Many of the finest moments in this play no doubt come from that process but it does prove, as has happened time and time again in the theatre that actors are not always the most gifted of writers and so we are left without much of a cohesive story or indeed a convincing ending, which is a shame.

Natalia Tena, playing Fevvers the bird woman, acting as though she’d just walked off the set of the movie ‘About a Boy’ with the same accent and movements (she played the young boy’s older love interest), is unfortunately the most normal character on stage even with all her posturing and swagger and indeed is the least impressive for this. Perhaps because of the extreme characters on stage hers was understandably diminished. Or perhaps because there seems to be no depth to the characterisation that we find it hard to identify with her. Does she have wings? Is she a charlatan? We are left, as an audience, to make up our own minds, which may not have been the wisest choice.

We are also asked to grasp Fevvers worth as a feminist icon of the age, her flight as rebellion from the sexist nature of the world in which women were forced to live. A sort of winged St Joan with attitude.

Unfortunately the Fevvers we were presented with had none of the qualities that make people iconic or that an audience seem to remember fondly or even a character that was interesting and actually, for that, most of the blame must lay with the script and not with the actress playing the part, (unless she wrote it, of course).

However, all that being said, this is a production that I would validate and encourage others to see. It’s playful, creative, and dreamlike, at times hugely impressive and effective and effecting on a gut level, if not always an intellectual one.

Funnily, for anyone curious enough or courageous enough it has enough in it to make you wish you could also run away to be part of that grim, beautiful circus, rather than the one that we all find ourselves in today.

written by Paul Tyree

http://www.paultyree.co.uk/