This is not a show that actually merits any stars. This is not a show that really merits a review. This show hardly merits an audience. However it contains, quite literally, some of the strangest and most disgusting things my poor eyes have ever been assaulted with and for that and that alone it is really worth a watch.
Returning to the fringe after a decade long absence the Jim Rose Circus boast the most outrageous and blindly shocking show yet and no one can call gentlemen Jim a liar. This hour of explosive fun and manic terror take you down the stairway to hell and brings you out the other side, sullied and smeared with sin...You really run out of hyperbole for this kind of production.
It would be a crime to reveal any of the actual events that occur in the show, their horrific beauty and staggering debauchery are in their reveal. See it for yourself. Safe to say it is rather like experiencing a Hieronymus Bosch painting spurt and tumble onto stage. It is rip-roaring fun with some great music but there was hardly a moment where the audience were not looking through their hands.
On a serious note, while all these grotesque and outrageous acts are meant to shock, what was truly uncomfortable was most likely unintended: The women that strut and perform these sordid tasks of herculean proportions have the look that you only see in sex trafficking documentaries; emaciated and damaged, their tired eyed let slip a sadness that their forced smiles can not cloak. I did have to wonder what form their payment would take. More harrowing was Jim Rose himself: He is the zenith of electric confidence when the focus is on him, a swaggering, swearing demonic juggernaut, but the moment he slips into the shadows and the focus is elsewhere he changes: Jim looks tired. Jim looks old. Jim has the kind of weary thousand yard stare that sighs 'I don't want to do this anymore.' But maybe I am reading into this all too much...
This show will be a massive polariser. You will leave hating it, loving it or simply speechless and looking for something to get rid of the mental images.
