Review From: The Circus Yard ‘Big Puck’, Brighton Fringe Festival; 24th May 2025
In this fifty-minute show, nine graduating students from London’s National Centre for Circus Arts (NCCA) three-year degree programme each present a five-minute act performed to a backing track.
Oskar Brightman, the sole male performer, goes first on the Chinese Pole to Feel Good Inc by Gorillaz. His act features several tricky drops – some uncommon – and, to my mind, is the strongest act on the bill. Oskar also looks to be a promising juggler from a short ensemble piece. Then Amelia Laughlin, dressed in a red pvc catsuit and red boots, takes Sonia Ammar’s Joyride to show her strength and flexibility in a slick sequence on the aerial hoop. Another aerial act follows as Chrys Shipley rolls up and down the corde lisse with aplomb to Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ Cherry Bomb. The only act with more than one performer features Xélia Froidevaux, Emma Moon and Ellie Beale blending acrobatics with aerial strop seamlessly as they take partnership work from the floor into the air. Silks are up next on the aerial front with Ruby Buchanan who gives us an edgy routine on black silks to Avril Lavigne’s Unwanted.
A reprieve from aerial work comes with Ellie Beale’s hula hoop routine during which she slides into splits with a hoop balanced on her forehead. A spot of play with the audience, giving them hula hoops to throw in, needs work and carries a bit of risk with a hoop given to a child at the back of the tent to throw to the ring but which lands on an audience member a couple of rows down! It’s back to the air for Willow Hippely’s aerial strap act to Massive Attack’s Angel, topped and tailed in character with intriguing twitches that merit sustaining throughout. Finally, Madeleine Margot, on the aerial pole, takes us on a slow fairground ride to Bowie’s Modern Love
There is a heavy bias towards aerial acts that can suspended from a single rigging point. The advantage of single point rigging is that there are many venues that can accommodate such acts, the disadvantage is the competition faced since there are many performers of this kind of act. All these acts are competent but I’m not certain that they have sufficient flair or innovation to stand out from the crowd. There is an argument that the NCCA should look to widen the options they offer on the degree to include tightwire, cradle and the like, as against graduates applying the knowledge and skills they’ve gained during the course to another discipline, as Thornhill and Lannigan have done on the Wheel of Death in Revel Puck’s The Nose Dive Assembly.
