Chapter 263: The Passenger: A record shop, an Odyssey and the boat home

Woolwich Works. Here to see a rehearsal of The Passenger, the latest play by Ade Berry, starring Alex Walton. A sequel to the highly acclaimed From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads, but very much a piece in its own right. One I absolutely loved.

I can’t make the sharing on Saturday night, so I’ve come today instead, simply for the love of it.

This time, I’m taking no chances with the Elizabeth Line and arrive half an hour early, wondering whether the café will be open on a weekday. The place is overflowing. Apparently Louis Theroux is in the house, which takes me back. I once met his father, whose Paddling Around French Polynesia had been my literary guide when sailing through those waters en route from France to Australia.

My mind wanders while I wait for Ade to collect me from reception. Then a call from a headhunter brings me back to reality. Do I apply for the job?

Ade arrives and we head upstairs.

I’ve met Alex a couple of times before and am introduced to Andi, who has designed the costume and set for both shows, as well as many more on the circus circuit. I’m immediately drawn to the record shop on stage. Boxes of albums, covers displayed on a couple of slanting stands on either side, and a chair centre stage. Mine is directly opposite. The idea of sitting bang opposite a performer for a theatrical lap dance makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable, for Alex as much as for me, so I slip off to the side.

And suddenly I’m in a record shop in a satellite town on the outskirts of Southampton. Martin is 27, ten years on from the last play, and stuck on loop. Like a cracked record, he’s in the waiting room of a record shop where life passes him by. Customers come in and go out, but nothing much happens. Legs On Wax is the name of this little outpost, the only quirk in an otherwise rather unremarkable cultural backwater. The shop is the lovechild of an ageing, chain-smoking rocker, the eponymous Legs, who has become a father figure to Martin. A wizened old Scots geezer with an encyclopaedic knowledge of rock music, not just the tracks but the press, and a wicked record collection. When Legs retires back to Scotland, Martin inherits the shop, the records and a treasured Bowie talisman that hangs on the wall. I rather imagine Legs on the Glasgow side of things.

It is testimony to the skill of the actor that immediately the daylight and empty space transforms in my mind’s eye into the low-lit cabaret table set-up it will have on Saturday night, and I’m instantly drawn into his world. Alex captures the gauche enthusiasm of a boy who has yet to become a man, despite his age, while slipping between all the customers who drift in and out of Legs On Wax, swapping accents and mannerisms with astonishing dexterity. He brilliantly captures the various tossers and time wasters who come through the door, each with their own little foibles, and it’s very funny. The dialogue is sharp, too, with nuggets of wisdom passed down by Legs, including the observation, “People who come in browsing are never actually just browsing.” There’s a whole philosophy in that.

And you can feel that same love of music coming from the other side of the stage. Ade’s own encyclopaedic knowledge is everywhere, not in the sense of showing off how much he knows, but in the sheer pleasure of choosing exactly the right song to carry a moment. The records aren’t just scenery and the soundtrack isn’t wallpaper. It ranges from The Doors and The Clash to Bon Jovi, The Mamas & the Papas, Joni Mitchell and Lana Del Rey, and somehow it all belongs in this world. There’s a real sense that the music has been chosen by someone who genuinely loves it, knows it intimately and understands what it can do dramatically. But it’s not just the music. Ade has written a story that manages to be genuinely funny without making Martin’s pain a punchline, and genuinely moving without ever becoming mawkish. The comedy and the grief sit alongside each other, as they do in life.

Martin’s mum wants him to have an adventure. Legs does too. Along with the shop, he’s left him £3,000, but Martin has no clue what to do with it. He has no direction, this boy who has been living in a bubble.

And then the bubble pops.

A phone call from Morag changes everything. I won’t give away the details, but the floor drops away, and a trigger warning for anyone who is grieving. The switch to a funeral in Scotland is stark. Martin stands there, shell-shocked, as the organ’s generic funeral music segues into Stairway to Heaven. It’s a funny conceit, and despite being reminded of that rocker’s crossroads cartoon doing the rounds on Instagram this week, with AC/DC taking the Highway to Heaven and someone else taking the Road to Hell, the reality of the scene made my eyes tear up. It was all very close to home.

There’s something about the way Alex handles this moment that stays with me. He doesn’t need to announce the grief or underline it. It’s there in the stillness, in the shock, in the space between what Martin has been and what he now has to face.

And then the journey begins. Alex jumps on and off the stage, engaging with the audience as he takes us through Martin’s story. The performance is physically alive, constantly shifting, yet never losing sight of the person at its centre. We’re not simply watching a character stumble through a series of adventures. We’re invested in him.

A plastic bag, a book, and a choice of music that I absolutely love. Riders on the Storm. Martin is, quite literally, heading into a new world. The book sets him on a journey to the Chateau Marmont. I’ve read many an article, if not the book itself, about that hotel, its scandals and the debauchery of Hollywood glamour. I find myself wondering about the stories held within its walls, and what Legs might have been up to during those mysterious couple of nights.

There’s something particularly intriguing about the Chateau Marmont as the destination because it isn’t simply some glamorous LA fantasy. It has that strange mythology of a place where people go to disappear for a while, and where the lives being lived behind the doors are rather more complicated than the image presented from outside. Ade’s own experience there, years ago and in the wake of a loss, sits somewhere behind the story, and perhaps that helps explain why the place feels more emotionally charged than simply a famous hotel in Hollywood.

It’s at the other end of the glamour spectrum from the documentary I’ve just seen, Last Guest of the Holloway Motel, which I highly recommend. But the two places have something in common. People escape there with their secrets.

Martin finally has his quest, taking him from the backwaters to the darker waters and seedier side of LA. A picaresque adventure that takes a detour through a strip joint, in a scene so excruciating for Martin that I’m squirming in my seat. Once again, I’m relieved to have moved off to the side.

I won’t say too much more about where the journey takes him, but Martin is truly broken by the adventure. And it is at this point, in desperation, that he calls the record shop, just to hear the answerphone message Legs left behind. That sets me off again. It is so touchingly done, and I’m immediately reminded of the voice note I’ve kept from my Mum on my phone. I’ve only listened to it once since she died in January. But I need her there, close by, and I often have those conversations with her in my head, in much the same way Martin does with Legs throughout the play. Suddenly this isn’t just Martin’s grief I’m watching.

It's when Martin has reached rock bottom that the breakthrough happens. Not in the happy-clappy, hallelujah sense, but in that quieter, more profound inner joy that comes from discovering a strength you didn’t know you had. The philosopher’s stone of any Odyssey. Not the return to the person you were, but the discovery of who you might yet become.

This is why I loved The Passenger. It’s funny, tender, and unexpectedly moving. It takes someone who seems to be going nowhere and sets him on a journey that asks what it means to find your way through grief, and what might be waiting on the other side of it. There’s no neat little bow tied around the whole thing, and none is needed.

Alex Walton is once again a tour de force. He carries Ade’s story through with such precision and generosity that we really care what happens to Martin. His physicality, his comic timing, his ability to inhabit the different characters and then draw us back into Martin’s inner world make the whole thing feel effortless, even though it clearly isn’t. The fact that he can be Martin one second and a completely different customer the next, changing voice, body and mannerism in the blink of an eye, is part of the magic of it. Martin becomes the everyman of our own grief, our own stuckness, and our attempts to find resilience in life. Alex makes that journey feel personal without ever making it sentimental.

At the end, Martin dances in his hotel room at the Chateau Marmont with the ghost of a memory of Legs. They waltz together to Dream a Little Dream of Me, in the Mamas & the Papas version with Cass Elliot singing lead. A romantic song, perhaps, but I don’t see anything homoerotic in their dynamic. It’s more a tender duet, a moment of connection across time and loss. The show has a cracking soundtrack, as you’d expect, and I’m told it will be turned into a Spotify playlist, as the last one was. Naturally, I can’t resist browsing through the albums afterwards.

Ade recommends I take the boat home. It will make the journey twice as long, but I used to commute to the City on the Clipper in the early days of my life before kids, when Xavier and I were living in the Docklands. The moment I step on board, I become a tourist again. Phone out. Selfies. Video WhatsApps to the kids, bringing them along with me on a trip down memory lane. The river has a way of doing that, of making the familiar feel new again.

At one point, a young lad gets on, bubbling with a similar excitement. He’s just turned 20, around the age of my own son, who is about to turn 21. Though he’s of the TikTok generation, complete with a fuzzy microphone and a little camera on his phone, he’s a real pro. We start talking and swap stories. As we pass the Cutty Sark, I tell him about my grandfather bringing her over to Greenwich. As we pass HMS Belfast, I tell him about my father, who was her last Captain and lived to 100.

I listen to my fellow passenger’s stories too, about where he’s going today and where he hopes to go in the future, and the career he’s setting out to build. He’s recording it all as he goes, talking into his little microphone and camera, making his own story for TikTok. Off on the next adventure.

Here’s to The Passenger, encore. Epic.

Chapter 262: One Fell Swoop - By a Thread

David Monteith-Hodge

 

What can you do with 30 metres of rope?

The first image that springs to mind is a tug of war. Childhood rivalry, school sports day, one side takes a tumble. At National Circus I came to associate rope with an uncompromising aerial discipline. It doesn't really give you a break, like a trapeze bar could, and I found myself in a constant fight with gravity. It was exhausting. Then, after two years sailing to Australia, rope makes me think of life on a boat: coils on deck, lines running through pulleys, the quick exchange of shouted instructions when something needs hauling, lowering or securing. The knowledge that one wrong move can have disastrous consequences. So I was intrigued by the idea of a show built entirely around it, and curious to see what One Fell Swoop would do with it.

I liked the name as well, By a Thread. Well, that's what life feels like at the moment. But this isn't some maudlin reflection on being on the edge. It is much more curious than that.

I had a small preview, in a sense, on the way to the theatre. On the Tube I spotted a dad in a bucket hat and dark glasses, lugging a suitcase and carrying a curly-mopped toddler on his hip. I played peekaboo with the child on the platform and later, when he started crying on the Tube, offered, via his dad, a red-and-white striped juggling ball with a smiley face on. It was accepted so gratefully that I gave him the other two, with their funny expressions, for good measure, and hopped off feeling inexplicably lighter.

I arrived at Jacksons Lane in the nick of time. “Welcome back to Circus, Lu!” was the line thrown to me as I took a seat next to Angus, still reeling after a Bon Jovi concert the night before. I was back where I belong.

The show opens with a familiar piano piece, repetitive and oddly settling. I couldn’t place it at first, then it clicked: Philip Glass - I wrote about Tao of Glass after seeing it twice this summer. Then, from nowhere, a body comes flying across the stage on the rope with a whoop, breaking that spell, and the music gives way to playful strings.

At first the rope is almost modest.Three performers hold it taut while another crosses it like a slackline, their hands constantly adjusting the tension beneath her feet. When she reaches the other side, a hand reaches out to meet hers. Then the rope changes again. It hangs in three sides of a rectangle. A body suspended between the vertical lines becomes a platform. A three-high rises from the floor, and suddenly the flyers are climbing higher, each grabbing a rope before dropping into a catch.

What started as a length of rope quickly becomes something far more inventive: a cloud swing, a bungee, a Spanish web, a Chinese pole, a treadmill balance. Familiar circus disciplines are dismantled and rebuilt around the collective. There is no hidden rigger making the machinery work behind the scenes. We see exactly how it happens. Hands pull the rope down. Bodies counterbalance. Someone has to ground. Someone has to fly.

And the strength this demands is extraordinary. It isn't just the person in the air doing the spectacular bit. The people basing are working just as hard, hauling, holding and controlling the rope while someone else climbs, swings or flies. I kept thinking, surely they must be doing twice the work? And then they did it again. These guys are virtuosos on the strings.

“Basing. Flying. Hup.” The show has its own physical grammar, built from things that sound deceptively simple: hold, pull, climb, catch. And the performers clearly know which job they'd rather be doing. Nobody wants to be the one still hauling the rope, doing the grunt work.

“Climbing, basing, yup, coming down. Hurry up Latonya. Ah, not yet. Ugh. Still basing.”

I loved the cheeky competitive one-upmanship as they bring each other down in order to clamber up themselves, and the way they gradually emerge as characters as they call each other by name. Ellie’s bounce, Easa's glorious sulk, particularly after his declaration on rope “I am beautiful”, strutting around, a leisurely examination of his nails while everyone else is flailing and needing his help, made me laugh. A neck hang produces the immediate response, “That doesn't look very safe,” before a squabble ends with one performer accidentally swept up in a foot hang like a sprung trap.

Photo: Moving Platform Photography

Then the mood changes.

Charice comes out of the wings hauling straps behind her, attached to the rope  as though dragging some invisible weight. The music turns dissonant. The playful rhythm disappears and suddenly there is an urgency to the pulling. The strain is visible. The effort is palpable. The straps become an extension of the rope, and the pulling segues into the most effortless, beautiful flight.

Photo: Ambrose Kelso

Later, Radiohead's Spectre accompanies a haunting solo. Easa climbs the rope with something almost painful in the movement, hauling himself upwards until he reaches the end of his tether. Another performer appears and the solo quietly becomes a duet, the two bodies beginning to mirror each other.

And then the rope becomes almost childlike again.

It turns into a giant cat's cradle in the background. They skip with it. They make knots. They swing from it, climb it and disappear into it. There is something of the playground energy in the way they keep testing what it will allow them to do, except the playground is six metres in the air and nobody has forgotten the physics.

That is where the show is at its most beguiling. The danger is real. There is no safety wrist loop to secure Jonathan at the top of the rope as he is spun round in Spanish web. But so is the play. The performers clearly know exactly what they are doing. There is something magical about watching a body suddenly appear somewhere you weren't expecting a body to be.

There is a later duet between Jonathan and Charice, the founders and creators of the show. I was completely taken in by the tenderness between them, to the point that the romantic in me found myself checking afterwards, “Please tell me they are a couple,” as though I would have been cheated if they weren't.

Photo: Sean Breadsell

They are. And that deep and steady partnership has shaped the whole show.

Other points I loved were the application of chalk on the chest as a precursor to Nina balancing there rather than on Cassia's shoulders, and the final act, in which the theme is brought home as all the cast are inverted and the rope is passed from foot to foot in a line. Not everyone has grown up on their hands, as Ellie appears to have done, and so there are moments when the rope is dropped. But that only seems to create more camaraderie and goodwill from the audience. Someone slips. Someone else catches them. We've got you. They all end up connected. 

Photo: Ambrose Kelso

I was delighted to learn afterwards that Jonathan had grown up sailing, and that they bought the rope with Charice from a shipbuilder's yard, then borrowed a couple of pulleys from the circus school in Melbourne and began experimenting. Jonathan's background in rigging and engineering makes sense of the show's extraordinary balance between physics and poetry. I love that it has grown organically from those first experiments over the past nine years. And that they regularly play board games all together on tour as well. A staple of family life and our ocean crossings on La Cigale, along with the “peg game” introduced by a Kiwi sailing friend. Great to find that's a shared language too.

Suddenly the rope made sense to me in another way.

On a boat, rope is never simply rope. It is an extension of the crew. It runs through your hands and connects you to something happening somewhere else. Pull here and something moves there. Ease the tension and the whole system changes. You learn the names of the lines, the knots, the pulleys, but what matters most is knowing when to hold and when to let go. And that camaraderie pulls you into the game.

Watching By a Thread, I realised I had been watching something I already knew without quite recognising it. The language was different, but the principle was the same. Seven people working a system in which every movement depends on somebody else's movement.

And perhaps that is why the show stayed with me. It doesn't need to tell us that we need one another, to depend on, to have fun with. We can see it.

Every time somebody flies, somebody else is holding the rope.

Photo: David Monteith-Hodge

Post-script: 

Before the show started, there was an announcement that photography with flash was permitted. But words are my thing.

Only sometimes I drop the thread, and words let me down. Especially when caught off guard for a post-show audience soundbite.

I nearly died when I saw it published, and me first up. “Creative, joyful and sexy” were the three words with which I enthusiastically used in the vox pop for One Fell Swoop on Jacksons Lane reel. 

Sexy?! What was I thinking?! 

There is something very different about saying a word spontaneously into a microphone and then seeing yourself first up on a reel broadcast publicly on a theatre's Instagram and Facebook page. On reflection, I felt my choice of “sexy” could make me sound like some sort of overexcited circus voyeur, rather than convey the camaraderie and sheer joy of being alive in the show that I intended. But maybe I'm overthinking it. Wouldn't be the first time!

Still, just to be clear, I wasn't talking about sexy in the Sydney Sweeney sense. I mean the cheeky way One Fell Swoop engage with the audience, and each other, and that physical connection conveyed through insane strength, ridiculous skill, tenderness and playful energy.

The Tao of Rope. The Shibari of Intimacy. 

That's what makes it sexy. And it was joyful. And creative. So, fair cop. I stand by my words.

Photo: David Monteith-Hodge

  

Directors: Charice Rust and Jonathan Morgan

Dramaturg: Zebastian Hunter

Cast: Cassia Jamieson, Charice Rust, Easa Min-Swe, Ellie Grow, Jonathan Morgan, Latonya Wiggington, Nina Robertson

Technician: And a special shout-out to Winter Chapman, whose circus background, musicianship and technical ear bring the sound and lighting together in a way I found particularly striking. I loved meeting her and hearing how she brings those worlds together.

Chapter 261: Zirkus Morsa's Amber Hour

A head topped with a shock of bleached hair pops out from behind the curtain, in profile. Then another head appears. I'm reminded of the photograph in my previous post, and smile at the irony that I've brought the clown from that shot to watch this performance too. The image has something of Beckett about it. Discombobulated comedy. Two heads appearing from nowhere, already suggesting that we have entered a world in which the rules are not quite the ones we know.

But this isn't a clowning show per se, though I imagined there would elements, as the show is directed by Kook Ensemble's Sean Kempton and Michaela O'Connor. It is a touching exploration of love and connection, set in a kind of no-man's-land outside ordinary time. Welcome to the world of Zirkus Morsa, the vision of  Rosa Wilm and Johannes Siven.

Their half-hour of Amber Hour, a 70-minute show in development and the last sharing in Jacksons Lane's Summer of Circus Hub, blew me away. It was physical poetry, but of a very different kind from the lyricism of the spoken and sung word in Circus Parade the week before. Where that show used language to tell its stories, Amber Hour seemed to tell its stories through bodies, objects, projections and the strange physical logic of circus.

I knew technology was going to play a part when I walked into the auditorium and saw a back row of tables crowded with electronics and switches, already being manned. The cinematic quality of the show was there from the beginning.

The backdrop was a projection of images that transitioned the scenes between street and home. On either side of the stage were two enormous perspex boxes, transparent but somehow mysterious, each carrying with it the promise of illusion. They became little worlds of their own, or perhaps portals into one.

In one, a phone rings. Eventually it is answered, but the man has the wrong phone box. He wants to get to another phone box, only to discover a huge queue, with a bouncer at the front acting as guardian to the underground scene, or the underworld, whatever lies beyond.

The whole scene has the slapstick manoeuvring of Chaplin or Harold Lloyd, as the man tries to get to the front, but there is something much darker underneath it. I later discovered that there is potentially an Orpheus narrative running through Amber Hour, and suddenly the queue begins to feel almost purgatorial. Though Hadestown this ain't.

The boxes change function.

In another scene, a woman strips off her top and enters the box with her partner. There is a voyeuristic element, for sure, but not in the Amsterdam sense, nor The Box. The top underneath is a sports bra, and what follows is instead something intimate and strange. She uses her body to wedge herself upside down from the ceiling, while her partner moves in for a kiss. At the last moment she ducks her head away, twisting the physical mechanics of the duet into a tiny comic tragedy of desire.

Elsewhere the box becomes a nightclub. All the performers squish inside, faces pressed against the glass, one particularly caught in a ridiculous grimace, while the music pumps and the party rages. It is New Year's Eve. A couple leave. She says goodbye and he goes back in.

Relationships in Amber Hour are constantly forming, dissolving and reforming, often with a lovely casualness. I particularly loved a series of two-high sequences in which partners were swapped almost en passant, the acrobatic equivalent of changing seats at a dinner party, or a crowd at rush hour navigating the spaces in between.

There is also a beautiful moment in which a performer plays with her own shadow self, apparently a pre-recorded projection. It is one of those images that feels almost magical precisely because the technology is so seamlessly incorporated into the physical world.

And then there are the recurring lovers.

A pair sit together on a chair and it is only when they stand that we register the extraordinary physical discrepancy between them. A good fifteen inches, as it turns out, which I believe is the name of their act outside of this. The comedy comes not from a punchline but from the simple fact of two bodies that don't quite seem to belong together, finding a way, through acro duo, to do so anyway.

Later, there is a duet on rola-bola, with a couple of glasses placed on it for good measure. Because apparently balancing two human beings on a rolling board isn't quite enough.

And perhaps that is what stayed with me. The circus skills are extraordinary, but everything is in service of this strange, funny, fragile world in which people keep trying to find each other. Bodies don't quite match but they do fit. Phones don't connect. People end up in the wrong places. Shadows acquire lives of their own. Lovers swap partners, disappear into boxes and emerge somewhere else.

The world loops back on itself, just as memory does.

There is something wonderfully Beckettian about that, but Amber Hour is much warmer than Beckett. Its absurdity is shot through with affection. Its characters are ridiculous at times, vulnerable at others, and circus gives them a language for all the things they can't quite say.

I came out on a high, in part because I'd just been able to share with a complete stranger the reason why Lucy Loves Circus, without needing to say a word.

This was such a good advert for where contemporary circus can go when it stops thinking of itself as a succession of tricks and starts borrowing freely from cinema, theatre, dance, magic and visual art. Amber Hour felt less like watching a circus show than being briefly admitted into somebody else's strange dream.

And perhaps that is the amber of it: moments, memories and relationships caught and held in suspension, like an insect preserved in amber. The world of Amber Hour loops back on itself, outside ordinary time, and I wanted to remain suspended there too.

Photo credits: Zirkus Morsa

Original Concept: Rosa Wilm and Johannes Siven

Directing: Michaela O’Connor and Sean Kempton

Performers: Tuk Frederiksen, Christopher Schlunk, Iris Pelz, Gisle Henriet, Raphaël Perrenoud, Moritz Böhm, Rosa Wilm, Johannes Siven, Chloé Lacire

Set Design: Benjamin Lebreton

Sound Design: Peter Buffery

Lighting Design: Pascale Laajili

Costume Design: Anne Blanchard 

Illusion Consultant: Guiseppe Sodano

Chapter 260: Follow a clown onto Substack...

A couple of weeks ago, this photo on Instagram caught my eye while I was scrolling. The Observer magazine was sharing a feature about journalist John Simpson, who had just left the paper after fifteen years as a serious crime reporter to become a full-time clown.

This is brilliant, I thought. How did he come across clowning? What inspired the move? I did some digging, partly wondering whether I’d missed my own vocation as a journalist. Though with my love of puns, headline editor for the Sun might have been a better bet. John’s Instagram bio said he could be found over on Substack, a platform I’d been toying with the idea of moving to myself. So I followed a clown onto Substack, and we connected there.

Having left teaching after six years, I was curious about the journey of someone else who’d made the leap. Not a little jealous, too, that not only does he have a way with words, he also has somewhere to leap to. I’m still figuring that part out.

For me, leaving the school where I’d been teaching for years, after investing so much time and energy in the job, doesn’t come without a wobble. That’s why I’ve thrown myself back into writing and looking ahead. To try and find my purpose, my path, my voice, and my use.

Part of me has been questioning that choice lately, if I’m honest. It's taking too much time to write each post, second-guessing every word and, in the process, missing the moment while the stories are racking up. As every clown knows, timing is everything.

But then I look back over what I've written since the last day of term, and I see twenty posts and over twenty thousand reads, which keeps me going. Some days you simply need to show up for people.

And reading the stories of other people fighting the good fight is inspiring. A video of his act, showing John in a pseudo-martial-arts get-up, reminded me of a colleague at school who offered to teach me some self-defence moves alongside how to do a cartwheel, a childhood dream of mine. It didn’t quite go to plan - much as I love learning a new trick, not quite there yet for turning head over heels. But it did bring home to me that I was looking for a teacher, and a safe space to be me. Maybe all I needed was to watch a zen master in idiocy in action, I reflected.

Which is how I ended up on Friday night at Lost the Sauce comedy cabaret, @wearelostsauce on Instagram, watching him do just that. 

It was a brilliant night. Another story.

John has also set up Clown Lab London with Gabriela Chojnacki, a community-driven project providing space for training, games and play, where they teach and which has hosted workshops with the likes of slapstick maestro Enrico Touché, coming to Jacksons Lane later this month, and multi-faceted dark clown and guru Peta Lily, who I first met through her shows Chastity Belt, and Topless. 

In the meantime, loving to bring people together as I do, I couldn’t resist getting John along to Jacksons Lane for the last sharing of the season at Circus Hub. John has come to clowning through the theatrical improv route rather than a circus space, and I wanted him to meet a couple of clowns from that world. There’s overlap for sure. Sean Kempton and Michaela O’Connor, the genius double act who founded Kook Ensemble (Sand getting rave five star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe), were directing Zirkus Morsa. I was sure that physical comedy would find its way into the show, and it did, along with the chance to introduce everyone afterwards.

And just when he was laughing at me, “Lu, is there anyone here you don’t know?!”, there was a “Hello, John!” Ha! It’s not just me. Perfect timing.

So check out John’s Substack "The Shiny Things". Great title to attract a magpie reader like me. He writes beautifully. Funny too. There was one moment reading one of his pieces when he made me spurt out my coffee, and live at the cabaret he has since made me choke down my wine.

I’m not yet convinced about my presence on Substack too, but I'm beginning to think I may have followed the right clown...

Photo credit: Matilda Hills-Jenkins (Observer Magazine)

Chapter 259: No Fairytales, Mind: Circus Parade at Jacksons Lane

A hollering off-stage and the screech of a train coming to a halt. What's going on? A face peeps out from behind the curtain, then another above it, and another above that. There's something delightfully Godot-esque about the squabbling questions as they emerge, one by one, hauling boxes. "We could be here for some time…" Welcome to the world of Circus Parade, a new musical in development by Jack Horner, who has written, directed and composed it. It's the first production from his newly formed company, Jack Horner & Company.

Given what I know of Jack's career, the fact that he was bringing a circus musical to Jacksons Lane wasn't a surprise. But the fact that he composed all the music too really bowled me over. Before I actually met him at National Circus, I first saw Jack, without knowing it, in Barnum at Chichester Festival Theatre over a decade ago, along with Kook Ensemble Director Michaela O'Connor, when Upswing's Vicki Amedume was circus consultant. There was a moment where they were spinning in umbrellas. I have never forgotten the delight and creativity of it. Latterly, I know Jack went on to do artistic work for Cirque du Soleil on global tours like Totem and Luzia, before heading to the West End as aerial director for Moulin Rouge!.

Circus Parade is based on the memoirs of Jim Tully, who ran away with a travelling circus in the Deep South in the 1900s, and all the colourful characters he met along the way, all set beautifully to the blues. Barnum meets Hadestown, I thought, and I was not to be disappointed. This sharing, about half an hour long, was part of a season of sharings at Jacksons Lane's Circus Hub, where artists open their work and their world to the public for the princely sum of £1. Even so, in August many people are away, especially on Bank Holiday weekends, and it speaks volumes that the place was packed out.

Talk about the blues. I turned up feeling a bit tender myself. After six years teaching in the state sector, I’ve stepped away from the classroom for now, with full-time the only option on the table, to take stock and make some space for my writing. This is my 20th post since the summer holidays began, so that space is clearly being put to use. I miss my students more than words, but I’m also taking a financial leap of faith, choosing freelance work over the security of a monthly pay cheque. So the precarious life of a bunch of misfits on the road, in the shadow of the Great Depression, their skills consistently undervalued and exploited, carried more resonance than it might otherwise have done. I’m not here to play the violin, just to explain why it hit home.

I settled into my seat. What a treat. A band of musicians on stage alongside actors and circus artists who also rotated in roles. What’s the performance equivalent of ambidextrous? “Multi-talented” works, but even that feels inadequate. Anway, the last time I was here, Clamber Collective were also on stage with musicians and physical performers, working in completely improvised territory, a different discipline entirely from the scripted precision on show here, each demanding its own kind of skill and nerve. I am struck again by the sheer diversity of technique and style that has been on offer at Circus Hub throughout the summer.

The action on stage freezes and on comes a wandering troubadour with a guitar, taking the spotlight. Jim Tully, played by Maxwell Darnell, is about to take us back to where this whole journey started, introducing the characters we’ll meet along the way. There are echoes of Barnum in his nostalgia and fondness for those sawdust-and-dream days. A drumbeat comes in, duh-dum, and soon the melody carries the feel of a train on the tracks, and we are rattling along. We are transported to the fare-dodging hobo world of the young Jim Tully, dodging the “dicks”, the private detectives employed by the train companies. Here, the world of the picaresque meets Keystone Cops comedy as an escape runs riot round, and through, the audience.

With the vagrancy laws “hanging over me like a noose,” Jim Tully joins forces with the cleanest of hobos, Damien James’ Rosebud, heading south to join a travelling circus in Baton Rouge. So when Rosebud asks, “Are you sure you wanna be seen walking with me?”, the racial undercurrent is clear. He is navigating Birth of a Nation territory, but Jim gladly accepts his company, not to mention the soap and food. Rosebud carries all the weight of someone whose life is tough, but doesn’t let it grind him down, and keeps going with a humorous, gentle resilience. Maybe that explains the name. I loved this pairing of characters, the young lad with a flash of dreams and a history of giving people the slip, and the gentle giant of a pragmatic friend. And when the same actor later plays Jim’s circus mentor, the lion tamer Denna, there is a balance there too. But Denna’s friendship has to be earned, and if Jim wants this strange little community to trust him, he has to share his story with them too. Jim, who has just fallen for aerialist Alice, jumps right in when she tells him, “no fairytales, mind!” Isn’t that what I’ve been doing these past twelve years with this blog, I wonder?

So Jim takes to his soapbox, the lion’s travel crate, and his guitar solo shows how versatile this cast is. His song of Hard Times has all the punch of a Frank Turner punk rock ballad, with a touch of the Irish about it, and it’s here that we finally meet the circus in terms of skills and acrobatic performance, as the physicality of the company really comes into its own. First up Simeon Montague springs into action, with a spontaneous joy that draws Alice in, while another acrobat, Bella Diosa, does graceful backbend spins in rotation, and Georgie Hutchinson and Will Meager bring the hand-to-hand. For me, that moment captures the joy and camaraderie of the circus community, and it’s crucial to why Jim is so drawn to Circus Moonshine and his growing friendship there. His opening up leads Denna to respond in kind.

Denna’s guitar playing and voice in “Ain’t No Use”, singing of acceptance, are mesmerising. It is a powerhouse of a gospel number, with Jim on bass this time, Jessica Daley on sax solo, and the cast in chorus. Oh lordy, it is just glorious. “When you play, them lions, they listen.” I love how the music is woven into the narrative, his guitar becoming the secret to lull(aby)ing the lions into submission. It took me back to sailing for a moment, to the French Polynesian islander who would serenade a couple of nurse sharks on guitar without fail each evening. Lions are also a metaphor for worries, as Denna makes clear when asked how to control them: “Look ’em in the eye. Turn your back and they’ll bite you in the arse.”

Unfortunately for Lila, the Strong Woman (Jessica Daley), she makes the mistake of looking Trouble in the eye, approaching the new acrobat Anton (Will), the very picture of the romantic hero from the novels we’re told she has devoured over the years. But we already know better. Out of earshot, we’ve heard him mock her as “the fat heifer”, and we can see the snake oil beneath his charm.

Fast forward to Act Two, with the scenes linked together by Jack coming on stage with narrative updates, so that we really do experience the whole arc of the musical. Here we learn that Anton has proposed to Lila, who has given all her money to him to buy the plot of land where they will build a new life together. Of course he disappears without a trace. There is no surprise there, but there is in the number Lila sings, a scene in its own right. What a voice. Her soulful yearning for the presence of this vanished man made me well up for her. What was really brilliant about the choreography was the way a circus artist becomes her mirror at the dressing table, then reaches out to comfort her in her vulnerability. It was so touching. I’ve never known such betrayal, but in that moment I really felt her pain. That’s the power of art. “Gets me every time,” said Jack afterwards.

The profit made from the misfortune of others takes me back to sailing through Martinique, where, in the ruins of the prison at Saint-Pierre, the Paris of the Caribbean, I learned about Ludger Sylbaris, born Louis-Auguste Cyparis, one of only three survivors of the eruption of Mount Pelée, which killed more than 30,000 people within ten minutes. He survived because he was being held in solitary confinement in a prison basement. Rescued from his cell, pardoned and eventually taken on tour with Barnum & Bailey Circus, he displayed his scars and recounted his survival alongside a replica of his prison cell. He became “the man who lived through doomsday”, forced to tell his tale of horror again and again and again. In both cases, the suffering of a Black man became part of the spectacle, an exotic frisson that could be packaged and sold. The parallel is uncomfortable and makes the tragedy in Circus Parade so poignant. These are real lives, shaped by poverty, racism, exploitation and extraordinary resilience.

And now we hear Alice’s own story of hardship, what it cost her and how the Moss-Haired Lady was born.

Here Alice splits in two, body and soul, as Georgia sings with a voice that is crystal clear, sweet and rousingly defiant, while Bella takes to the air in a real showstopper. I loved the use of a hair-hanging act to convey the pain, betrayal and fierce fire that has fuelled Alice’s life on the road. She spins and spins, and the length and endurance of the act become part of the storytelling. It is phenomenal. The spinning is insane, but what gets you is that she keeps going.

By now, the music, the story and the circus have become inseparable. Jack’s achievement is not simply that he has written, directed and composed a musical. It is that he has created a world where the music carries the story, the story gives meaning to the circus, and the physical skills become another language entirely.

And perhaps that is why Circus Parade caught me where it did. As Alice says about the travelling life, it eats you. I get that. And while I’m sitting at something of a Miller’s Crossing in my career, there is something very familiar and cathartic in watching these folk navigate the obstacles. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. But they keep going.

Circus is, after all, about falling, catching, balancing, trusting. You miss the trick. You get back up. Someone catches you. You learn to trust again.

Not because it tells us everything will be all right.

But because it shows us what people do when it isn’t.

I want to see the whole thing now.

Lead photo credit: Mark Morreaux. Cast from left to right back row: Simeon, Bella, Will, Georgia, Damien
Front row: Georgie, Maxwell

Musical direction: Tamara Saringer
Musician: Tony Bowen
Choreography: Vanessa Vince-Pang
Lighting Design: Zoe Spurr
Rigging: Tim Lenkiewicz
Production Management:  Acrobatic Arts

Chapter 258: A Kid's Cabaret at Woolwich Works

Fancy a kids’ cabaret?

What a great concept! Could I convince my own kids to come along? Not a chance.

To be fair, two are now fully fledged adults and the third is a teenager on the cusp. Gone are the whimsical Barnum days. National Circus graduation pieces are more their vibe these days. But perhaps I am a regular circus Wendy, still inclined to follow the circus off to Neverland, and I was curious to see what Leap Circus had cooked up, particularly as this was billed as the first kids’ cabaret of its kind.

There were other reasons to make the trek to Woolwich Works, somewhere I’d never actually been before. Ade Berry is the new Programmer there, with years of circus programming behind him (and ahead!) and it is always good to catch up. I had also clocked that Acosta Danza’s creative hub is in the building next door, where they run classes. And then there was Lydia Harper, creator of Leap Circus, putting it all together. Lydia has such a director’s eye and vision, on top of all her experience as a performer herself. I first saw her way back at Jacksons Lane, before she joined Cirque du Soleil.

In the pre-kids days I knew the Docklands well, having lived there for a couple of years. Since then I’ve been over on the other side of London and it has been a right old trek. So hallelujah for the Elizabeth Line. A mere ten minutes or so after changing from the Northern Line and I was there.

Well, nearly.

As ever, I was running late, after a long, extended brunch with my Parkrun community after a morning volunteering, so I put on Revel Puck’s playlist on Spotify to get me legging it up the escalators at Woolwich and take the stress out. It certainly did the trick. I was laughing as I approached the building listening to 99 Luftballoons, only to look up and see the Punchdrunk building opposite, complete with a sinister character holding a red balloon. Very It.

Punchdrunk was my first immersive theatre experience. I went to Battersea Arts Centre for The Masque of the Red Death when I was pregnant and nearly fainted with fright as I donned the mask and cloak. I had gone because my niece was working on the set; ironically, she was over in the US at the time with Punchdrunk director Felix Barrett, taking The Drowned Man to Broadway. I could feel the goosebumps. Thank goodness it was broad daylight. The contrast with what I was about to see made me smile.

I had time to run to the bar and grab a drink. Was it appropriate to order wine at a kids’ cabaret? I opted for an alcohol-free beer, then spotted the line-up of circus mocktails. Brilliant touch.

And then came the first surprise: the cabaret was outside.

There was a tug of nostalgia seeing all those parents with young children. I do and I don’t miss that. Mostly, I was rather glad I could hover at the back and watch. And what I watched was a show that understood its audience brilliantly.

Lydia was our compere and she ruled the roost, setting the tone from the outset. The show knew its key audience was under ten, but never patronised them, while making sure the adults had plenty to enjoy too.

What better way to begin than with a Minion diving into aerial silks? Constanza Ruff, in full Minion mode, brought the slapstick immediately, accompanied by that upbeat, banana-crazy anthem. There were splits, bananas and plenty of visual silliness. The energy was up before we had barely begun.

Then Donald Craig appeared with Be Our Guest. What a voice. I’d started following him on Instagram when the cast list was announced, so I knew a little of his background as a musical theatre actor and singer, “the voice of Hong Kong Disneyland”. Live, though, it was something else. A resonating voice, charisma and a real ability to engage the audience. Before long everyone was singing along, and later dancing too. It was a fantastic way to welcome the kids into the world of cabaret.

And then came the cabaret twist - contortion with a tennis spin. I’d last seen something like this at La Clique, with a performer worming his way through a racket. Here Jo Foley came on like a pro, in sun visor, whites and neon pink socks and wristbands. She was blimming bendy and hilarious. A cheeky flash of skort that would delight a child’s sense of humour, but with just enough of a flirtatious nod to the adult world of cabaret to make the grown-ups laugh too.

How to turn spectacle into chaos? Hundreds of plastic balls. They were distributed through the crowd and the children were invited to lob them into the basket of their favourite performer. Brutal. Hilarious. Chaos ensued. I deliberately paid no attention to who won.

Ed Stephen then came out with some neat lassoing tricks, making it all look ridiculously easy. I know from experience that it isn’t. Years ago, when our engine broke down in St Lucia, I had to lasso our boat to a post on a pier in front of a crowd. It took me three goes. Back at Woolwich Works, Ed nailed it and I imagined that over the holidays a few skipping ropes would now end up knotted.

Lydia kept things moving with a trick she hadn’t done for over a decade, she told us. Should she do it? Roars of encouragement. Of course she did, and up in the air she spun in a dizzying neck spin.

Then, after warming up by threading through the crowd, Physical Fool Sophia Knox-Miller tumbled onto the stage at speed in an orange boiler suit. She persuaded the adults to make fools of themselves to the children’s enormous delight before carrying them off through the crowd, a banner billowing out behind her.

Finally came a seaside turn from Ania Giannattasio, wandering on in mask and flippers, complete with a neat beach towel trick, aerialist chalk deployed as suncream and some wonderful clowning before she took to the hoop. I will never forget that heel hang of joy, performed with a towelling turban on her head.

In neat continuity, Donald returned for Under the Sea, and suddenly a whole load of bubbles were released across the stage. The children chased them, danced around them and tried to catch them, and for a few minutes the entire space became a whirl of movement and delight. His presence with the children was a real joy; they just gravitated to him.

Then Ed returned for a showstopping juggling finale, complete with confetti cannon. He knows how to work a crowd, and by this point it was entirely his.

And just when you thought it was over, up popped an inflatable banana that seemed to dance its way along. An inspired final addition from producer Anna.

This is where the show really got me. It wasn’t simply that the acts were fantastic. It was the sheer variety, and the pleasure of having no idea what was coming next.

A singer. An airborne Minion (also on stilts). A contortionist. A juggler. A clown. An aerialist on hoop.

There is something refreshing about seeing cabaret stripped back to its most basic ingredients: a dynamic performer, a fantastic act, music, surprise, audience participation and the sheer pleasure of watching somebody do something extraordinary with their body.

And here, those ingredients were handed straight to the children. They weren’t simply spectators watching a show made for them. They were part of the cabaret. They shouted, sang, danced, threw balls, chased bubbles and decided who they liked best. The adults got to be silly too. Sometimes we all need to reconnect with our inner child.

Afterwards, one child summed the whole thing up in the vox pop rather better than I could:

“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

I left, albeit sober, but not a little Punchdrunk.

P.S. My back went the next day. It was pointed out to me that at least I had climaxed at Woolwich Works. Possibly not one for the kids’ programme!

Chapter 257: Clamber Collective

Clamber Collective. What a great name.

A collective noun. A clamber of circus artists? There is a certain onomatopoeia about the word. It brings to mind a climbing human tower, like the Catalan castellers, and a hint of anarchy too. The roots of the contemporary circus scene that stretch back to the early days of Archaos. The promise of stomp, a riot. 

I very nearly missed them.

Life had been busy, and, queen of the power nap that I am, I had grabbed a siesta. I came to and, daydreaming, made myself a cup of tea and started doodling in bed. A whisper came first. I have somewhere to be, what day is it...? Then the sledgehammer hit.

Crap. It's Friday. Jacksons Lane. 5pm.

Still groggy, I jumped out of bed and grabbed the most colourful clothes I could find. Tangerine orange, paired with a float of patterns threaded through with royal blue. It just felt right, and I had no time to second guess myself, making it to the theatre with minutes to spare.

This is my first summer back at Jacksons Lane for a good decade, at their new Circus Hub, where you can see a sharing of work in development each Friday for a quid, so I am a bit out of the loop. Familiar faces for sure, but so many new companies on the scene. Like this one. Clamber Collective is the brainchild of Bendy, Freddie and Ellie, and this was their first performance in a venue of this size. I didn't know quite what to expect.  As it turned out, neither did the performers as what followed was a gem of pure improv, as I was later to find out, between circus artists and musicians on stage.

I slid into a seat without registering anyone around me. A first, really! That's good, I thought. I like seeing new crowds mixing things up. But for a moment it did make me think: if this is the next generation of circus artists, where is the next gen of chroniclers?

I recognised a couple of faces on stage though, albeit from things I've seen just this year. Aerialist Leah, from seeing her graduation piece at the National Centre for Circus Arts, and acrobat Toffy, one half of Brainfools Duo, whom I caught at Ensemble Festival. Both operate at such a precise level of brilliance, that I was glad to be seeing more of them.

What followed was an innovative dialogue between musicians, circus artists and a dancer. They listened to each other and responded wherever the mood took them, riffing off each other like a piece of physical jazz.

There was Bendy as the swing in a human cradle, Freddie's fluid acro, Leah exploring the possibilities offered by the dance trapeze with a kind of graceful curiosity. The inclusion of Shulah as a dancer reminded me of the collaboration between Gandini Juggling with ballet dancers in Ephemeral Architectures. And the musicians didn't just accompany the movement, they goaded it, teased it, sometimes challenged someone on stage to find the answering shape.

Sometimes there was comedy. Toffy bringing the rigging centre stage, turning it into a character to play with. Alex's superb juggling slipping playfully into the music, with a downward whistle informing the drop from a high throw, or following it. There was an understated humour to that, a quality that reminded me of Onni Toivonen, who performed in Shhhh!, a cabaret I curated.  Then Leah became the Pied Piper in turn, her recorder orchestrating an increasing number of performers into a relaxed, loose, swinging skip across the stage.

Sometimes more pensive reflection. Leah and Toffy in a hand-to-hand duo, acting out Bendy's spoken-word narrative of a couple navigating the highs and lows of life. 

Afterwards, I discovered that every element of the performance was improvised, so no two rehearsals during the week were the same. It reminded me of those warm-up exercises at National Circus where you have to move around at speed without bumping into anyone else. Only here they were throwing circus skills and dance moves into the mix, picking up a clue or a cue from each other, throwing it back and trusting that someone else would catch it, musically or physically. 

It was clear what a gift the week of research together at Jacksons Lane had been, giving them the space to really listen to each other, and so build the confidence to take these risks and learn from each other. Impressive too, quite how many people were on stage.

There is danger in this, because the uncertainty of what comes next brings the possibility that they could simply fall flat on their feet. In the audience, I appreciated that same mixture of apprehension and wonder in the same way I would watch a tightrope walker manage the balancing act. That was part of the reward of watching the show. And it was a huge success. 

Clamber Collective is a self-funded company, so I was delighted to see afterwards that they'd brought some merch with them. It was creatively done in their inimitable style, with the same doodling energy running through the design of their handmade prints and hand-printed T-shirts. I picked up a piece of art that I am going to frame from a Valentine's piece, so hearts all over it. Perfect for LucyLovesCircus! And I also picked up a t-shirt for my daughter about to go to uni, who saw the grad show with me at National Circus and has been talking about picking up aerial skills there. Bendy and Freddie showed me the notebook they have kept through the creative process. I was fascinated. Each page was an artwork of mind maps, ideas and connections blended with art. 

You could see the collective brain at work on the page, as on the stage, where the musicians were reading bodies as closely as the performers were reading sound

And suddenly the performance made even more sense. The state of mind behind it all,  flexible and hypermobile. There was a kind of jazz dissonance to it, without a jarring note.

Which brings me back to the name.

A clamber can be messy, a little unruly. It suggests bodies piling in, potentially getting in each other's way but somehow making space for one another. 

And that is the essence of Clamber.

Not simply a group of circus artists and musicians sharing a stage, but different bodies, brains, disciplines and instincts, listening closely enough to make something together without knowing exactly what it will be.

A clamber of artists.

A surprise of performers.

Maybe that's another collective.