BWW Reviews: CIRCUS OF HORRORS DAY OF THE DEAD, New Wimbledon Theatre

One of the many reasons that television dealt a fatal blow to Music Hall was television's voracious appetite for new material. A Music Hall act could astound audiences of 500 each evening, the act being refined but essentially unchanged for years, without becoming stale for its newly minted nightly audience.  A slot on the Royal Variety Performance might hit fifteen million television viewers, who would then come over all "been there, seen it, bought the T-shirt" when the show came to town. Circus, with the Masked Magician Breaking the Magician's Code and the world's most skilled performers doing turns on a channel near you (probably tonight), faces a similar problem  - and that's before you get to youtube's amateurs and fakers tumbling, clowning and conjuring. How do you make circus relevant for a 21^st century media-saturated audience?

Doctor Haze's answer was to create the Circus of Horrors, a hybrid of a death metal gig, a traditional circus and a variety show whose new Day of the Dead show tours through the Spring. See through the slightly spurious Mexican death cult theme and the S&M imagery, and you'll find some very traditional circus acts doing their thing - acrobats, knife-throwers, sword-swallowers, contortionists, clowns - and doing it with real elan. A largely young audience enjoyed the live band's thumping music, the costumes and genuinely gasped as the visual extravaganza played out. Just as importantly, the performers took real pleasure in the reaction of the audience - a pleasing contrast to how grimly efficient Olympic gymnasts (for example) have become when "executing". The Doctor has been punting the formula for fifteen years, so he knows it works, and that confidence has clearly been transmitted to his cast of a dozen or so twenty-something men and women.

This reviewer wasn't offended by the Benny Hillesque use of the women in the ensemble (though some did a lot more than pout in panties) nor some very brief male nudity (God knows it was trailed enough to allow the prudish to push off to the pub), but the mock throat-slitting of a helpless girl by Doctor Haze struck a gratuitously unpleasant note in a night of largely panto-villainy on his part. My other quibble is an old one - why speak / sing to an audience through a microphone if the speaker's diction is so indistinct that the audience can't make out what's said?

Day of the Dead's brand of salacious circus is on an extensive UK tour - click here for dates and don't say you weren't warned!