It could have been me, but in a hot Spiegeltent on the Southbank with chairs rammed closely together with a mixture of expectant adults and children, I wasn’t feeling it as the lights went down for ‘Tumble Circus’.
This show is more Vaudeville than circus. A comic and sometimes touching autobiography of how the two performers met, fell in love and even had a baby. Juggling, acrobatics and balancing acts were overlaid with a ‘comedy of errors’ performance style as the duo bickered and pouted, and flirted with members of the audience to wind each other up. He had a rumpled charm with his string vest and stupefied gaze, and she worked a toned body, big smile and punkette, peroxide hair - it was as if Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love had met and fallen in love with the Flintstones.
This was all likeable enough showmanship. But over this ran a pre-recorded narration in which their voices told the story of how they met. With the words sometimes hard to hear over a heavy bed of music, this offbeat, ironic narration felt at odds with the slapstick routines and broad facial expressions of the live show.
I also wasn’t sure the kids in the audience got it. The show is advertised for ages ten and up and while the children giggled at some of the routines they looked blank-faced during the more adult moments of reflection.
There was one sequence where it all came together as, pregnant with their ‘child’ (a cushion hastily stuffed up her jumper), she let him carry her and her baby bump in a series of balances, lifts and drops that had style and elegance and also worked as a metaphor for their relationship.
The final trapeze sequence – definitely in Flintstones mode as they performed in matching silver python pants – was comic and fast moving, performed as a series of aerial clinches over an unmade bed. The shapes came thick and fast, confident and broadly funny, but ultimately not really exciting.
Big cheers from the audience so maybe it was me. I felt like Simon Cowell at one point on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’: ‘I liked you and I wasn’t expecting to like you.’ Big Pause. ‘But I’m afraid it’s a no from me.’
