Review From: The Circus Yard ‘Little Puck’, Brighton Fringe Festival; 25th May 2025
Set in the roaring twenties with a suitably jazz-era soundtrack, this hour-long circus cabaret from BrainFools is devised and performed by a cast of four: tall, bearded Jared Shanks in a black suit (sadly not a tail coat) with white tie; Ben Kaufman in a sharp bellhop costume complete with pill box hat; Rika Fujimoto in a skimpy flapper dress with a flamboyant flower in her hair; and Toffy Paulweber, company co-founder, as a boiler-suited janitor with a bushy moustache.
The cabaret’s conceit is that several members of the cast, including the host, have gone missing, forcing those present to improvise and seek volunteers from the audience, the first of whom holds a microphone for Fujimoto who we discover to be appealingly eccentric. Her barking mad singing leads other cast members to carry her off as she turns full-throated crazy. An acrobatic collision between Kaufman and Paulweber follows, as each attempts not to be forced to perform next. Kaufman loses and performs an impressive balancing act on handstand canes to a medley of tunes including Coleman Hawkins’ La Rosita and Fletcher Henderson’s Stockholm Stomp. His figure-hugging bellhop costume, in red with gold stripes down each leg, looks great as do his tight handstands with solid side bends and effortlessly floating legs. It is an impressive act.
Shanks, with his black suit now topped with a black hat, takes his turn with some hat manipulation after which he juggles in low light with illuminated balls, building from one to five with the occasional fumble in a routine that doesn’t have the effortlessness of a born juggler. Adopting the role of host, Fukimoto now introduces Paulweber, still boiler-suited, who straps on a pair of heels and walks on the top of four bottles to Creep in what feels like a work in progress. Fukimoto has had time to change and now, wearing a white trouser suit (with complementary flower in her hair) that matches her white silks, she performs a tidy aerial routine to Tea for Two that includes straddle splits between the silks. Shanks and Paulweber follow with an acrobalance act that includes Paulweber standing on Shanks’ upturned feet as he lies with his back on the floor and, later, standing with one socked foot on his head. Kaufman reappears, this time with hula hoops, for an act that includes spinning four hoops on his hands and feet whilst upside down. It has the precision and tightness of his hand balance routine. He is followed by Paulweber, dressed in a yellow and purple bodysuit, with a frantic corde lisse routine to fit with frantic swing music.
Fukimoto, who also plays the piano with some skill, returns to recite a poem in her mother tongue. She’s delightfully batty. Nearing the show’s end, Shanks, Paulweber and Fukimoto team up on silks and Kaufman, who uses his attractive voice well when speaking or singing, closes with What a Wonderful World.
The 120-seat tent is about 40-percent full for this show that is – accurately – billed as family friendly, and the quartet garner an enthusiastic response from the audience. Just for the record, Paulweber is a graduate of the National Centre for Circus Arts; Kaufman studied at the New England Center for Circus Arts; Fujimoto is a multi skilled aerialist from a dance background, and Shanks is a graduate in Dance and Kinesiology from Cape Western Reserve University in Ohio.
