Company Man is a joy to watch, with professional clowning and circus skills woven into the stories of office workers. It is not only an interesting look at Japanese work culture, but also proof that you can produce an original and effective circus show without focussing solely on spectacle.
Cheeky*Park display a wide variety of skills, from unicycle, trapeze and juggling to dance and slapstick humour. These are all intermingled effectively into the lives of five office workers, telling tales of office competition, the rush of the morning commute and office romance. The setting of these acts and tricks transforms them into much more meaningful scenes, being technically impressive whilst also having a point. I find so many circus shows are solely visual - something that could never be said about any of these sequences. The cast of five were great actors as well, with some particularly hilarious facial expressions across the board. The fact that the whole tale was told so effectively with just a choice selection of English words (used to comic effect) was a testament to their storytelling skills.
Doing a circus performance in C-1 is a tricky feat, but they use the whole of the space, coming into the audience frequently and managing to construct a range of set pieces on a basic stage. Even without a big top to perform their circus tricks, Cheeky*Park are able to display such an array of talents, and strike a perfect balance between circus and theatre.
