Review from: Jacksons Lane, London, 6th Jun 2025
From the Wings is presented by Circus Nebulous, a touring circus theatre company formed by this year’s graduating students as part of Circomedia‘s BA programme. An audience of about 50 was present for their London date with tickets priced at £10.
The company claims to blend surrealist storytelling with breathtaking visuals and unexpected circus feats, transporting audiences into a dreamlike realm with a suspenseful narrative – and they succeed to a degree. The action is performed to a recorded soundscape that ranges from what I take to be Balkan oompah music to appropriately psychedelic noodling.
As we enter, a character in a three-faced white mask is playing with a Cyr wheel that he lets spin to the floor as he leaves. The sound of the wheel on the floor as it spins then falls is pleasingly amplified bringing tension to the moment. Speechless figures, not in mask, enter; a wide-eyed woman in a green leotard and rag strip skirt enters gazing at the trussing, a man attempts to leapfrog over a juggler’s head and catch his clubs, a woman enters with a haphazard cartwheel, then four women hanging from the rigging stare at the Cyr as it is rolled around.
The narrative is provided by a disembodied, distorted voice that entices the eight performers to go through the Cyr wheel and into his world. “Blinking, breathing, bewildered. How out of place they are” the Voice opines, and proceeds to issue the performers with a series of challenges that include clambering on ropes, going on or over a wide trapeze and tackling juggling beanbags dropped to the ground.
As the performers playfully and wilfully interpret the challenges in their own way, the Voice says, “they have no respect. Prepare to be obliterated” leading to a fight sequence in which the Voice uses mind-control skills to repel and subdue the performers until they manage together to overpower the Voice, represented by one of the performers in a mask.
After a competent solo Cyr routine, the cast – all now masked – stand in the wheel and slowly writhe to discordant music. They stand behind it and peer through, then take off their masks and gawp before stepping through, wide-eyed, into a brighter light. They gaze in wonderment as the spun Cyr spirals to the floor and the 80-minute show, in two halves, ends.
The challenges set by the Voice provide a framework for circus skills to be shown. Cyr, silks, juggling, trapeze, tumbling, balancing and corde lisse all appear, sometimes with several members of the cast taking it in turns to do some skills whilst others, as if a chorus, look on in wonderment.
Excepting the Cyr, the skills are neither particularly daring nor skilled, but within the storyline that is acceptable. There are several good visual moments such as when three performers take hold of a rope each, all suspended from the same central point, and walk around in a circle as other performers move around on the rope. A moment of genuine fun is when three performers lie with their bellies on the wide trapeze bar and, as an end is lifted, slide down it to end all bunched up at the end.
At times the tricks feel shoe-horned into the narrative, but this, of course, matters not a jot in a surreal and dreamlike conceit, just as the masked figure of the Voice can help the ‘goody’ climb onto his shoulders in order to crush him!
The naïve characters do not talk, bar for one moment, and spend a lot of time as a chorus pretending to gawp in awe or gaze in open-mouthed wonderment whilst one or two of them perform on a rope or juggling etc. This becomes a distraction, and it would be better if fewer performers were on stage at times (and if their characters and acting were more refined).
Overall, a fair attempt is made at merging circus skills into a dramatic structure, but neither the drama nor the circus is totally compelling yet.
The producing team below are also the members of the cast:
Producer & Costume: Gracey Hart
Director & Sound Design: Emba Wimbush
Associate Producer & Dramaturg: Salli Chedburn
Stage Manager & Rigger: leuan Waller
Choreographer & Marketing : Drew Alana
Associate Movement Director & Associate Choreographer & Lighting Design: Ciaran Innes
Movement Director & Associate choreographer: Marika Cheyne
Prop Maker & Stage Design: Indica Willow
Photo credit: Caitlin Damsell
