Review: Turbo Circus
After seeing the posters for the Turbo Circus shows around town I reacted the same way I do whenever any other circus comes to town; like a massive five-year-old.
I was planning to go with a few of my NoFit friends but by a happy coincidence I got to go to see it for free.
Free stuff and the circus? I couldn't have been any happier about this concept.
But I don't know, it can't be that I've 'out-grown' these types of family-friendly circus shows because I'm still completely in love with them and I know I always will be.
I still enjoyed the combination of acrobatics, motorcycles, and slapstick comedy filler but I just felt something was missing.
The whole idea of Turbo Circus is that it's advertised as 50 acts in 100 minutes, meaning there is two minutes per act and trust me, that wasn't the way it was laid out at all. I know it sounds a bit rubbish that I'm complaining about the fact the Turbo Circus was rushed but I am. 100 minutes is the same time period as most of the shows I've seen and they've mostly been fantastic, so this one didn't really have an excuse.
As I said it just seemed rushed and like a really lacking concept for a circus show. I knew what I was letting myself in for; a basic family-friendly kiddie show but even so, I was still somewhat let down, especially seeing as they didn't even do what they advertised.
Don't get me wrong, some of the performers were great, I was really impressed to see some of the skill the old Wookey Hole Youth Circus people had. There were some really amazing acts, especially the tumbling and acro acts from The Black Eagles (who are a different company all together and are just touring with Turbo Circus for the time being), it's just a shame how bad the set up for the show was.
I was upset that the only aerial acts they had, which were silks and hoop, were done at the same time; as much as I love floor acts like acro and unicycling, aerial acts have always been and will always be what makes a show for me.
Also, speaking of unicycling, there was this one act where the performer made a huge deal over his act and bigged up how hard it was by 'falling' off his tall unicycle a few times and then a bunch of different performers did much more impressive stunts on tall unicycles later on in the show, making that one act look completely irreverent. I don't know, it was just odd.
In conclusion, I mostly enjoyed the show, it's perfect for a day out with your kids as it's colourful, comical and engaging. I'm just glad I didn't have to pay for it.
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