Cirkopolis, by awarded winning Québécoise outfit Cirque Éloize, is a clever nod to Metropolis and loads of other dystopian fantasies – particularly 1984 and Brazil.
Set against a steam punk/industrial background, this is the slickest, most polished piece of circus that’s hit our shores in donkeys. While we may have seen some of the tricks before, we’ve never seen them executed so effortlessly or with such control and precision.
The show starts with work-a-day plebs in utilitarian grey shuffling paper. The grey’s interrupted every so often by flashes of colour, initially worn by women only. Our first glimpse of light is a woman in a diaphanous red dress on a cyr wheel (the giant metal hula hoop). The act’s so beautiful you can feel it in your chest. The six dudes on the German Wheel (the oversized hamster wheel for grown ups) is a stark contrast – they’re all in grey and the performance is so muscular that you can whiff the testosterone.
Following a go-slow and some industrial action, the workers rise and in a piecemeal emergence of colour (a tie here, a sock there) things start getting out of hand in the office – people are launching themselves off the filing cabinet (which looks like ace fun) and getting pissed on the job.
The acts are united by a clown – a hard-pressed, lonely worker who dreams of love. The act where he dances with a dress on a clothing rack is funny and poignant – again, you may’ve seen something like it before, but never so well acquitted.
BY MEG CRAWFORD
