Going to the Circus

Circque di Soleil - Totem at the Royal Albert Hall was the evening's entertainment, and entertainment it was!

The Royal Albert Hall is just an amazing venue, and they certainly put it to good use. I don't really want to give the acts away, but the staging and lighting was incredible in the way it was worked. It made for some incredible visuals and really did enhance the acts. Take the stick twirling fellow - we've all seen the street performers and fringe festival artists do this sort of thing, just probably not at this level. Truly the best of the best of what's known as Street Theatre, but put on a stage with amazing lighting and soundtrack to be even better again. The same goes for the incredible gymnasts and other performers.

It is, after all, a circus, but an evolution far beyond what PT Barnham ever probably envisaged. I'm sure he would be quite happy to see such a futuristic version of his creation.

I mentioned the sound track and this is something that is worthy of note. The live band did an amazing job of creating so many varied styles of music for each act, and the woman who sang during several of them had a fantastic voice. She'd just quietly appear somewhere on the fringe of the stages to perform - always enhancing, yet never intruding on the acts. The same could be said for all the surrounding performers on the more involved acts. While you focused on the main performers it never hurt to take in all of what was going on, and this never detracted from what was being done.

It was all extremely clever in how it was put together, and all with the underlying Earthy tone of the title "Totem".

I've never seen a Cirque di Soleil show before, and I know there's been several before this one, but I doubt I will miss any of their forthcoming versions/editions.