Cantina

Cantina is an hour-long masterpiece of circus and vaudeville which delivers all the fun of the fair while avoiding all the traps.

From the moment the audience walks in, the music, the ushers, even the tent itself are all working to create a sense of heightened reality. All the classic elements are there – a stage band, magic, tight-rope walking, tumbling, contortion – but carried out with breathtaking skill and certainty. When you're walking a rope over the audience, that's confident!

The traditional format of small, five-minutes acts is followed but each one of these packs in more tricks and stunts than most other circuses manage in their whole show. The flips are high, the bends are excruciating and the danger feels real. An important element in this is how close most of the audience are to the action. When somebody in this show makes a hard landing, they do it inches from the front row and the dust they kick up flies all around the small tent.

Something this energetic could have come across as rushed or desperate but Cantina is carried out with such showmanship that this is never a concern. The audience is given time to anticipate the most painful or difficult feats, or to applaud the most impressive balances. But then come the unexpected turns which leave the crowd gasping. Midway through an apparently familiar trick, the element of danger (the burning hoop or swinging blade) will be shockingly embraced by the performer and, suddenly, all the rules have changed.

Added to all this is the elegant characterisation and emotion the performers bring to each scene, moving effortlessly from outright joy to confronting violence to eerie, innocent vulnerability. These changing themes are incorporated cleverly, so that the dramatic elements and technical elements are not competing for stage time and detracting from one another. Instead they fit seamlessly and naturally together, each enhancing the other.

Cantina is a show that promises a great deal, then delivers it.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Strut & Fret presents
Cantina

The Vagabond, Garden of Unearthly Delights
Rundle Park (Kadlitpinna Park), East Terrace, Adelaide
17–27 February 2012
Bookings: www.gardenofunearthlydelights.com.au