The Wyvern Theatre's stage was recently darkened by the cult-hit show Circus of Horrors, a farcry from the family friendly, charming and amusing traditional circuses people might expect.
Gone is the whimsical fanfare of classic circus musical, replaced by the pulsating and extremely loud heavy metal rock music played by a live band. Gone also are the clumsy slap-stick clowns, replaced by horror-movie style killer clowns.
And the family friendly PT Barnum style entertainment? Well that's been thrown well and truly out of the window as scantily clad circus performers do tricks and stunts that amaze people as much as they disgust them, make them cringe, or make them want to turn away in case something bad happens.
The whole thing together creates quite the experience as audiences are treated to a relentless, dark, gritty and most certainly adult night of entertainment that also manages to be a little bit cheesy and tongue-in-cheek.
A sword swallower put all manner of swords in his mouth, including a curved blade. A bone-cracking contortionist horrifies with how bendy his body is, two creepy 'doll' acrobats defy gravity, women in lingerie hoola-hoop, swallow fire and swing from the ceiling, werewolves, scarecrows and witches appear and at least two people are 'murdered'.
The whole thing is compered by the ballad-blasting ring master Dr. Haze who sinisterly introduces each act and then belts out an accompanying suitably macabre musical number.
There were cheers, screams and silence at certain points of the show, but mostly nervous laughter from the Swindon audience who were mostly in awe at what they were seeing people doing live in front of them.
The entertainment factor is clearly there in spades, pretty ladies, death-defying stunts with an element of danger, edgy horror elements and non-stop adrenaline fueld music, but those things don't always work well together in the show and sometimes it can all be a bit much.
There was also some sort of storyline to what was unfolding on stage, But it was completely nonsensical - at one point a tarot reader summons a werewolf who opens up some stairs with teeth, at another point Dr. Haze starts killing people for some reason.
Clearly with something like Circus of Horrors people aren't after finely-tuned narratives, which is fine, but finely-tuned performances definitely aren't too much to ask, and unfortunately, there were a couple of mistakes from the performers, who I'm sure are spot-on most of the time, but as much as I understand people are human the errors do take you out of the performance.
That being said, if you want to see incredibly talented people doing incredibly talented things with one of the most unique and thrilling presentations out there you can't go wrong with Circus of Horrors.
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