There’s something quite wondrous when a show gently levels its family-centric audience so that everyone is transformed into a child, rapt in moments of innocent amazement and giggles. Which is what this circus mix of creativity gone bonkers has done.
The premise is quite simple: our mistress of ceremonies, the colourful and engaging Arielle, wants to fly. She yearns to take off into the air, communicated sweetly, desperately, and humorously via some top dollar casual clowning skills and a couple of well placed acrobatic moves. She’s likeable and gently holds the spine of the show together. And who better to ask for help in her flying ambition than a collection of aerialists, tumblers, teeterboarders, and high wire walkers, providing a showcase format within a fairytale world.
A facade of enjoyable gentle mayhem is underscored by creative disciplined talents, smiling infectiously at every turn and cultivating an aura of fun filling the entirety of the big tent. There are genuine moments of shock-and-awe pearl-clutching – most notably as the acrobats fly almost horizontally on their swing into the rafters, twisting and flipping to audible gasps and screams – as well as gentler sweeter moments of fun, that create a varied engaging tempo.
Highlights include the bespoke site-specific teeterboarding and the only female duo Wheel of Death act in the UK, with visuals that stuck and inspired. It was as if what was possible in physics could be re-evaluated by this lot.
It is rare to get actual moments of wonder as an adult. The circus collective Nose Dive Assembly mined a couple for me in their Birds Of A Feather show, and I thank them most sincerely for it. A downright testament to dreaming bigger with joy.
https://www.brightonfringe.org/events/the-nose-dive-assembly
