Chapter 247: Revel Pucks - Two for One!

My iPhone has just reminded me that it is five years to the day since I first saw Revel Pucks in a big top in Walthamstow Forest with Lucy. I remember our journey there. God knows where we got off, but there followed half an hour’s walk through meadows until we spied a big top, with Sam Goodburn sitting on the roof, legs dangling. And I never wrote about it! I’m sorry. I was knocked for six at the time, having only just completed my PGCE.

Lucy was an Art and DT teacher I had met while training at a school in Camberwell, after spotting a fabulous display of student-made circus memorabilia and needing to find out more about the teacher behind it. Lucy was so much fun. Of course she was. It’s all in the name, right?! We hit it off instantly. But she is not either of the two Lucys mentioned in the previous post. As I said before, we are legion.Anyway, we have had all sorts of adventures over the years, but Revel Pucks was our first, and now our most recent, as we went back to see them in Walthamstow again last month.

This time we went with my daughter, a new friend from parkrun volunteering, Maria, and an old university friend of mine, who made it down with his leg in plaster following a bouldering accident, bringing his children with him. Hats off for the dedication. The girls and I found a shortcut this time: a bus from the Tube to virtually outside the tent. It was a close call, though. Lucy was running late and, in a scene somewhere between Amandaland and Challenge Anneka, I somehow persuaded the driver to hold the doors, to the amusement, I hope, of the other passengers.

The show was called A Glimmer Daze Gambit. I love the whimsy of Revel Pucks’ show names. Does founder Luke Hallgarten come up with them, adding word-juggling to his repertoire? I have never asked.The names conjure up a kind of Midsummer Night’s Dreaming, just the ticket for a big top in what feels like the middle of the countryside.This show centred on a pair of clowns who desperately wanted to join the circus. Audition notices had been posted all around the site reading: “Clowns Wanted”.

With the end of term, and my teaching job, in sight, I wondered for a moment whether they might have space for me. The last time a clown had posted a job advert, albeit tongue in cheek — “National Circus are looking for a Finance Manager. Do I know any accountants? Because I could use a pay rise…” — I had ended up with the job, after all.

But here there were two qualified clowns already in the running: Stella and Kit, arriving with everything they needed packed into a suitcase and hoping to join the troupe.There were so many comedy tropes. I loved the different noises each time the suitcase opened, and half expected it to sprout legs and run off stage, a visual gag that Charlie Chaplin’s grandchildren, James Thierrée and his sister Aurélia, used to perform when they were part of their parents’ travelling circus.

There was so much magic and laughter in store: lights spirited from hand to hand as acrobats tumbled down from a three-high; Kit’s flowing juggling; a trike passing through a flaming arch; a balloon man bouncing around the stage. There were moments of sheer wonder: the aerialist on straps spinning beneath the cloud swing; the couple hand-to-hand swinging in the Russian cradle; and two Cyr wheels, one above the other, separated by a platform, with clever lighting bringing them into play with each other. There were ridiculously outrageous turns on the teeterboard, which always freaks me out; a clowning duo on the rola bola, as hilarious as it was cleverly choreographed; and a breakneck roller-skating duet, the performers held together by hands, feet and even necks. My favourite moment, in terms of sheer camaraderie, trust and joy, came when the whole cast managed to balance together atop a giant rola bola. Who thinks these things up? I loved it for its sense of community, fellowship and joy.

On the way home, we caught a bus driven by the very same driver. I think the other passengers were bemused by just how excited we were to see him again.

I had not fully appreciated that, the following month, I would be seeing a completely different Revel Pucks show with a new cast. I had thought it would do me good to see the same show again and write from fresher memories, but there you go. This time I went with friends who had joined me for Kook Ensemble at Jacksons Lane on the Friday. They had fallen so in love with SAND that I suggested they come back for more circus antics two days later.

It was Jon’s birthday, and he is a keen juggler himself. He once tried to teach me to juggle fire clubs. I was pretty pleased with my one-club trick. So back they came, because why not? This time I brought my other daughter, to keep things balanced.

The Wing Scuffle Spectacular took me back to the Revel Pucks of old that I remembered. It announced itself with the anarchic energy of Archaos, complete with a swinging chainsaw to be dodged. As with Glimmer, a clown sits at the centre of the narrative, but this time the story is about friendship and facing your fears. I remember Sam so well from five years ago in a white boiler suit and red cap, although the clown is now female, something very much on my radar at the moment. But that is another story.And what a treat to see someone as much a legend on the unicycle as Sam, whether bouncing up and down steps or zooming around at a diagonal slant in an enchanting routine set to “Send in the Clowns”. As our clown grows in confidence in the story, so does her relationship with a toy lion, which races around the stage on a remote-controlled car and really comes alive. There were clearly repeat customers in the audience. We had only just taken our seats when a child a few places along shouted delightedly to his mum, “Look, I see the lion!” At that point it was tucked away, little more than a pre-performance shadow in the wings. Great spot.

It felt strange at first to see Revel Pucks inside a theatre rather than in the round beneath canvas, but it did not diminish the magic for a moment. The aerial work was superb, from silks to single-point dance trapeze. The teeterboard had more comedy this time, and a narrative about facing fear. The audience urged on, and waved the flag for, the Swiss performer who announced that today she really did not feel like doing it.

Halfway through came the showstopper. Or so I thought. Once again, the cast clambered together onto a giant rola bola. This time, however, the platform was balanced atop a cylindrical object, like a giant double tyre, rather than a globe.That meant it would “only” wobble from side to side, rather than potentially shooting out in any direction, a fact for which I was rather grateful given that we were seated in the second row. It was still astonishing: a delicate balancing act dependent upon every performer making constant micro-adjustments in response to everyone else. But I was slightly nonplussed. I sneaked a glance at my watch. We were about 35 minutes in, just over half way, I would have thought. But was that the end? It had all been so clever that I would hardly have felt short-changed, but still, I had not expected time to fly quite that fast.

Of course it was not the end.

There was more clowning, more acrobatics and more showstopping. There was the awesome club juggling, totally and not remotely a drag, set to RuPaul’s “Sissy That Walk”. And then came a dizzying finale on a piece of apparatus I had been aware of but had never seen used live before: a suspended spiral. It was mesmerisingly beautiful. The movement seemed simultaneously in motion and static, if that makes sense, like one of those trompe-l’œil images of never-ending staircases that appear to go up and down at the same time.That really was the showstopper. Beautiful.

Brava. Encore. Bravo tutti!

Afterwards, we decamped to the Boogaloo, a pub I first visited in August 2014, during a summer of R&D at Jacksons Lane, just as I was getting to know the theatre that was once a church.That brought back memories. So did the sign, beneath which my friend, a girl Sam, sanpped me for posterity, while sipping an Aperol Spritz. It summed up the warmth of this sun-shiney the summer perfectly, along with the words: “O Lord, make me pure, but not just yet.” Sunday worship at the shrine of fools.

Circus, it is so good to be back.

Cheers all!

The Wing Scuffle Spectacular is at Deal from 6 to 16 August, Croydon from 20 to 23 August, and Brighton from 27 August to 6 September.

A Glimmer Daze Gambit is at the Edinburgh Fringe from 8 to 29 August, in the Lafayette at Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows.

See www.revelpuckcircus.com/ourshows

And one last top tip: search out by show title their cracking playlists are on Spotify.

The dog days are over, and I’m feeling good.

Chapter 246: Catch "Step and a Half" at the Edinburgh Fringe

On Friday I went back to Jacksons Lane for a sharing of Kook Ensemble's beautiful show SAND ahead of its Edinburgh Fringe run. Chatting afterwards to another performer, Tamzen, about weekend plans, I learned she was going the following day to see the Palestinian Circus and its show Step and a Half at Soho Theatre Walthamstow. Wait, what? How did I miss that?!

The show Step and a Half is made up of graduates from The Palestinian Circus School, an organisation which came onto my radar over twenty years ago. A university friend had sown the seeds of my own aerial journey when she had begun taking trapeze classes at what was then the Circus Space in Old Street, now the National Centre for Circus Arts (NCCA). Her day job then took her to the Foreign Office in Jerusalem, where she also worked to secure necessary travel and security permits so Palestinian staff at youth circus hubs could cross military checkpoints to teach. About a decade later, taking evening classes at the NCCA myself, I met her former trapeze teacher, Claire. In one of those beautiful twists that make the circus world feel so tightly woven, Claire had also travelled out to work with the school, and we talked about her involvement and how my friend's intervention had helped. I cannot be certain that the circus project my friend and Claire supported was this exact organisation, and I have not had time to check before leaving for a family holiday tomorrow. But the connection resonated nonetheless, that whole network of commitment and solidarity around grassroots circus in Palestine. The fact that the performers in Step and a Half were graduates from the school struck me too, having seen the NCCA’s own graduation show only last month. They were counterparts, in a sense, and I imagined circus graduates and professionals based here in the UK sitting in the audience in solidarity. It is a global family.

As much as the circus connection, it was the mention of Palestine itself that drew me. Last August I went with a colleague from school, another Lucy, to see Farah Nabulsi's film The Teacher. It follows a Palestinian schoolteacher trying to protect his students while navigating the realities of occupation and concealing an American-Israeli hostage in his basement. The film brought to life complexities that newspaper articles and internet arguments never quite reach. That is the power of the arts. They take something apparently distant and make you sit inside it.

And so, to Walthamstow. I've grown increasingly familiar with the place these past few weeks. It began with Revel Pucks' A Glimmer Daze Gambit in a big top, not that you'd know it from this blog, as I'm still chasing my tail, writing everything out of order. Then, a couple of weeks later, came my first visit to Soho Theatre Walthamstow, for a sharing of Grayson Perry’s autobiographical musical, which is another story still waiting to be told.. The point is, while I may come from deep south of the river, I can now get up to Walthamstow in under forty minutes, and it's beginning to feel like a home from home.

I returned this time with yet another Lucy (we are legion), who'd also come with me to Tao of Glass (See Chapter 243 - click here). Catching up before the show, taking our seats in the auditorium, I realised with a sinking feeling that my post about Tao, posted the night before and already viewed hundreds of times, badly needed an edit. I had written it in haste, trying to do justice to something that touched on my niece and felt deeply personal. Having only just made my Instagram public, I felt horribly exposed there too. But the theatre Wi-Fi was not working. Too late for a quick fix or a retreat to draft. I simply had to sit with the discomfort.

Fortunately, the moment the performers took the stage, staying present wasn't difficult.

The performers wandered on stage one by one and then came together, the music propulsive, joyous, unmistakably Levantine. Picture dancers, hands round shoulders, in a line or semicircle, “stamping the ground” together, which gives the Dabkeh dance its name. It threads through the whole show, in music and in symbol: community, solidarity, connection to the land. The audience began clapping along, joy through resistance, resilience in motion. I later learned that the title of the show refers to the rhythmic wahdeh w nos  “one and a half step” in Dabkeh. To me, it also suggested progress under constraint: not even two full steps possible, perhaps, but still a step and a half forward. Not two steps back.

Within minutes the line between stage and auditorium had dissolved. One performer fell backwards into a crowd of waiting hands. The audience cheered and whooped. Sandwiched between young children in the rows ahead and behind, their faces lit with delight, I soaked up that spontaneous exclamation of wonder, thinking it just might be the most beautiful noise in the world.

There was group juggling, objects passing between performers in a shared rhythm. A ball dropped, the flow carried on regardless. Moments like that don't diminish circus, they bring its difficulty into focus and make the success that follows more exhilarating.

An aerial sequence on straps ended with a performer suspended by one arm. A voice spoke of the strength of her body, the possibility of hope. The physical language made the words tangible: strength, body, hope, resistance. I found myself thinking of the spoken word artist Polarbear (Steven Camden), who was involved in a Gaza Monologues fundraiser some years ago. This sequence had that same quality of spoken-word poetry becoming flesh.

Then Hamed Khdour's Cyr wheel. There is something mesmerising in that circling stillness, particularly the movement that resembles a spinning penny with ever-decreasing momentum. Fresh from Tao I thought of the three rings of light representing three levels of consciousness, the largest reaching down to the most diminutive as the penny settles, sheer essence, and Phelim McDermott's call for Deep Democracy in the world. In the spinning I found the Tao and the Now, connecting to source. My heart went out later, reading a Fest interview (click here) with executive director Mohammad Rabar, to learn that Hamed’s brother was shot at seventeen and that he carries his memory into every performance. The whirling became, in retrospect, not simply extraordinary technique but a deeper connection to love.

I loved the female performers’ costumes, their jeans opening into skirt-like flares. They made me think of my daughter, partly because I have lately been borrowing (back!) her trousers with a skirt overlay. She would have admired the embroidery too, as she is developing her own textiles work. She's been talking about taking up circus skills at uni, and she's passionately principled in how she sees the world, so I could see her spirit soar as their bodies did, such strength, such embodied grace. Circus really does give you wings. I don't need the reminder, I have a pair tattooed onto my wrist now, after coming across a market stall in Valencia recently called Soul Journey, un viaje al alma. That's what this show did too. It took my soul on a journey.

A later duet on white silks, preceded by what read as a couple's rite of union, carried its own romance: love strewn across the stage in white and red petals, a veil placed on the Beloved. I've been thinking more and more, these days, about the mystical search for the Beloved as I fall into this second half of life, whether in the poetry of St John of the Cross, in Rumi, or in Elif Shafak's portrait of the deep well of love between Rumi and Shams in The Forty Rules of Love. It made me think too of Sufi dancer Aakash Odedra's recent performance The Song of the Bulbul at Sadler's Wells East (click here for video trailer), whirling across a stage of rose petals, lifting them into the air as he turned. Here, the red and white petals went airborne on the spin of silks.

Then there was a recent conversation about how the skirts of Sufi dancers echo those of Gujarati garba in Garbh (click here), which I had seen the previous weekend at the Ensemble Festival, and flamenco too, with that same grace carried in the hands. Flamenco itself was shaped profoundly by the Spanish Romani, or Gitano, people, whose ancestors travelled west from India, as well as by the Arab-Andalusian and North African traditions of southern Spain. Even my favourite Spanish word, that yearning ojalá, trailing its whimsical subjunctive, descends from the Arabic inshallah. May it be so. This was a production of hope.

Watching the Palestinian Circus, all of it resurfaced: the hand gestures, the fabric, the stamping feet, the whirling circles, different traditions speaking to one another across borders. If ever there was duende, it was here.

The show seemed to hold an impossible number of climaxes.   A diabolo travelled in zigzags of pure joy, at lightning speed with such creativity of patterns that I wished every juggler I knew could be there to see it. Fire poi traced patterns of light, the momentum building until the performer bent backwards and a wheel of fire skimmed his stomach, so precise, how could he not catch fire? The hour flew, and we were all instantly on our feet at the end, applauding.

In the Q&A, Mohammad described how the organisation began twenty years earlier, in the aftermath of the Second Intifada, when checkpoints, walls and violence transformed everyday life. The circus was founded as a way of working with children and young people, rebuilding society through art. Despite everything since, he said, circus, music and dance would keep carrying Palestinian culture from one generation to the next.

Asked about their dreams, diabolo juggler Noor said he wanted to become a professional artist, perform at the highest level and travel the world. Aerialist Layan Rafidi spoke of wanting to teach as many children as possible, particularly in Palestine.

Then the showstopper question. What did they want the audience to take away?

Mohammad turned the question back on us. We needed to be free too, he said, not only to speak up and demonstrate, but to change how we live. "After three years nothing has stopped... the West, the UK and all Europe, the US, all this silence. I know a lot of people supported us but the genocide is going on."

Then Layan took the microphone. "We love to dance, we love to sing, we do everything," she said. "The checkpoints, the Occupation, don't define us."

That was the essence of the show. The tragedy of the situation does not define them. They are joy. They are movement. They are dance. They are resilience.

Noor thanked the audience for the wizard energy they had given the performers, energy he wanted to carry back to the West Bank to give them patience and strength to survive.

Afterwards, in the foyer, we saw Layla Rosa, Green Party councillor for Walthamstow and an experienced circus practitioner who'd be leading the next day's Q&A. I feel a rush of gratitude every time I bump into her, remembering her static trapeze classes at the National Centre, where she still teaches. If ever a show made you want to take to the air again, this was it. She was preserving her voice, so Lucy and I chatted away to her, both struck by Layan's words. Give Layan the microphone tomorrow, we said. We wanted to hear more from her.

Then I managed to puncture my own sense of uplift. Two performers came into the foyer and, in my head, I decided they were the people from the Q&A. I launched into praise of their skills, and the give-Layan-the-microphone moment. I had mistaken Julia for Layan. My heart dropped like lead. Welcome to the UK and casual racism. Nice one, Lucy. Six years teaching in diverse inner-city classrooms, priding myself on seeing each student as an individual, and still I had done this. That was my dropped ball. They were gracious. I apologised. We moved on. But it was the most important lesson of the day: I can get so absorbed in my own narrative that I stop paying proper attention to the much simpler reality of who is standing directly in front of me.

Later, I stepped outside for a few deep breaths (on my vape, a recent habit I really need to drop) and saw the performers sitting together on the steps. Still tender from my mistake, I might have slipped away. My friend, though, still had that wizard energy in her, and mine returned. That was the energy I wanted the cast to carry away from us too.

On the walk back to the Tube, Lucy and I passed a patisserie that winked at us. In the window were trompe-l'oeil pears that were actually cakes, passion fruits made of mousse, all sorts. We went in. On the counter stood a little Laurel and Hardy statue, a welcome talisman for the clown in the rose-tattoo dress. The woman serving us, in a hijab, was about to take a break with her son, who was chatting merrily away in Arabic with some adults at another table at the back. The world of the performance gently dissolved into the everyday life around us.

And again that lesson: Stop. Pay attention to what, and who, is directly in front of you.

There is one final thread I want to pull. My postgraduate research explored Cuban theatre during the Special Period of the early 1990s, and how representations of utopia on stage helped people endure economic crisis, shortages and power cuts. Watching Step and a Half, I was reminded more powerfully than ever of the ability of art to respond to hardship by imagining an alternative future. Joy as an act of resistance. My feed has been serving up more of the same since: the humanitarian clown Sabine Choucair, founder of Clown Me In, describing a show where the terrifying buzz of a military drone was transformed into the sound of a wasp, something that could be comically chased and squashed.

Performance changes the terms of reality.

Circus may be the ultimate utopian space. It shows us the apparently impossible, made possible through expertise, discipline, imagination, trust. In an ensemble, every extraordinary individual achievement depends on other people too: those who throw, catch, hold, steady, watch.

Which brings me back to that image from the beginning: a performer falling backwards into a crowd of rising hands. There is trust there. We are family, lifting each other up. And perhaps, ultimately, that's one message from Palestine to the international community.

Catch us.

Performers: Mohamad AbuTaleb, Hamed Khdour, Julia Rafidi, Omara Sharabati, Layan Rafidi, Sana Joani, Qamar Asbah, Nouraldin Jadallah.  

See the official trailer on Vimeo (click here). 

The Palestinian Circus with Showpoines as the lead producer for the UK production, collaborating with Medical Aid for Palestinians is taking Step and a Half to the Edinburgh Fringe and will be at Underbelly's Circus Hub on the Meadows from 8-29 August every day at 2.05pm except 17 and 24 August. 

www.edfringe.com/tickets - click here

There is also a crowdfunder aiming to raise £10,000 to support the Palestinian Circus’s visits to Soho Theatre and the Edinburgh Fringe. It remains open for donations: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/the-palestinian-circus-school-comes-to-the-uk

 Lead photo credit: www.sohotheatre.com

Chapter 245: Three Little Words for Kook Ensemble’s SAND at the Edinburgh Fringe

It’s Sunday, and before I move on to writing about the Palestinian Circus I saw yesterday, I need to go back a step. I’ve just been walking on the Common, trying to make a little space for reflection. I could be at church; I could be in a pub in Islington for an evening in tribute to Glen Hansard. Instead, after a wonderful afternoon at Jacksons Lane with friends and family seeing Revel Pucks (another post to follow), I need some quiet and some nature.

The sun catches the pond, making two globes of light: a little Sun God worship, Akhnaten-style. On the Pray As You Go podcast, Ladysmith Black Mambazo are singing “Uthando Olungaka, What a Great Love”, joyful music that takes me back to Paul Simon’s Graceland, which I played endlessly as a teenager. And from there my mind wanders, as it does: back to Akhnaten, to Gandini Juggling, to balls tracing the air like the notes of Glass’s opera, to the flow of philosophy and memory in Phelim McDermott’s Tao of Glass (click here).

I think of the universe; I think of the great Love that connects us all; and for a moment I feel the warm glow that everything is all right. Except, of course, it isn’t. Look at Gaza. The world is on fire. But the podcast is asking whether hardship, persecution, peril or distress can disconnect us from the Infinite Source. No, I think not, though it may feel that way. That is my credo, anyway.

Gradually, as my feet follow the familiar path across the dried-up, thirsty Common, the monkey mind quietens. I am simply there: watching light move through the leaves, ducklings gliding towards their nest, tufts of long grass pushing through the sandy soil. And suddenly I am back in Kook Ensemble’s Sand, which I returned to see at Jacksons Lane on Friday. A voice pops into my head: you love it; you’ve got to write about it some more. I owe so much to these shows, to circus. God only knows what I’d be without you...cue the track from the show.

But what can I add to what has already been said? I've already caught the essence in my previous post (see Chapter 225 - click here), which celebrates the tenderness between a married couple, the bond of romantic love and the joy of shared memories, while delivering the sucker punch to the gut as the wife loses herself in the windmill of her mind. 

But the thing is, the show has changed a year on. How? Co-director Sean Kempton asked me afterwards. Like a river, whose course is the same but the water has changed. What did I actually notice? I reach. The sloping dune has gone for a start, I say. And there's more marram grass?! Maybe I notice it more this time as I've seen the explanatory video on Kook Ensemble's Instagram. The grass is "the quiet hero of the coastline, helping to trap sand and stabilise the dunes". It struck me this time round as a powerful metaphor for the memories that take root despite the shifting sands of dementia. The performers? Dilly Taylor and Myles MacDonald play the older couple, Alvaro Grande and Ebony Gumbs the younger version. Well, I saw this show a year ago, they will have gone on their own journeys with the characters they play since then. I can't pinpoint what has changed exactly there either, choreography aside from the modifications to the set, but there is a texture. Maybe because it has been a while since I have seen a contemporary circus show like this, I was even more struck by the force of the circus skills in conveying the narrative, and by how powerful that physical language can be as a medium. It was all more heightened for me.

There is the gentle irony as Myles switches between radio stations and vinyl. There is the comedy of Alvaro’s supermarket courtship, juggling the contents of his basket as the scanner’s sound effects become the pulse of racing romance. Then Dilly and Ebony mirror one another in deftly synchronised acrobatics, drawing Alvaro into their play, while Myles remains on the outside looking in. This is a projection of Dilly’s inner world, and she is becoming lost inside it.

It had an even greater emotional impact on me this time. It felt more poignant. Carina Simões, the producer, was right to warn me as I took my seat to brace myself for the journey, and for the tears. It brought more to the surface. 

Maybe the shift is also because I've changed too. I'm more vulnerable. Since the last show, I've lost my Mum and the companionship of the couple makes me think of Dad, who had gone ahead of her, and I like to think was there waiting for her on the other side with his lightness of being. I'm not the only one to have experienced the twitching blinds, the flickering bulbs, the uncanny coincidences in the immediate days that followed. Mum and Dad had lived in Devon, where Sand takes root, bringing up a young family. They loved that coastline and I brought these ghosts with me this time. Kook Ensemble have thought about this too. For anyone affected by what the show brings to the surface, there is literature to take away afterwards, space for discussion and signposts towards further support.

There are also other performances I have seen recently that now echo here. Last weekend, at Certain Blacks’ Ensemble Festival at the Royal Docks, I saw a Gujarati performance called Garbh. The theme was different, but again there were dancers moving energetically across a sandscape, wheeling through the space, sifting sand through their fingers. Their skirts whirled like the balls of sand Myles juggles at the end of Sand, before the balls ultimately disintegrate. The skirts and the movement of the dancers reminded me in turn of the contemporary dance of Aakash Odedra, a Sufi whirling dervish, in The Song of the Bulbul, which I saw recently at Sadler’s Wells East, a soul-awakening performance. That is another story. It all comes back to The Infinite Circle. The revolving vinyl Myles places on the record player. The giant turntable in Tao of Glass, on which Phelim McDermott is spun around in a coma while Glass’s Steinway pours out music, reaching into his state, just as Myles delves into his wife’s consciousness.

Then there is the feather balancing in Sand, so beautiful. A moment of delicate, slow-motion juggling that conveys the gravity of loss through fragility. It took me back to watching DOMTE, by Catalan circus artist Nacho Flores, again at the Ensemble Festival. Nacho balances heavy wooden blocks in a high-stakes structure, and although the materials are different, there were parallels. My neighbour on the bench there had started telling me about the Cirque du Soleil feather act he had seen, which blends both ideas. The feather is the final element, its light touch at the very tip holding the whole construction in balance. I saw the original Sanddorn act once at the Edinburgh Fringe, the same principle at play, an entire precarious tower brought down, plummeting, by a single plume. It was part of a poetic contemporary circus show Wings of the Heart - click here by Swiss company Rigolo Nouveau Cirque, which I believe was later bankrupted by the tour. The final feather. And my heart goes out to all these performing arts companies that invest so much, taking such risks, to enrich the lives of others, bringing sense to the world, and making sense of it, through their art.

That afternoon, I had come with friends to Jacksons Lane, and Sand made a huge impression on them too. Their son, a university student and a hugely talented, creative artist, asked me afterwards, “Do you think it’s too late for me to join the circus world?” Of course not. There is so much ahead of him. They were so moved by the show, impressed and inspired, that they booked to see Revel Pucks with us on Sunday.

I also found myself catching up with folk from the circus world. Tamzen Moulding, whom I have known for years, introduced me to Craig West, who did the lighting for the show, framing the action so beautifully alongside Pete Buffery’s tech and soundscape. Perhaps I was especially alert to those contributions after all the behind-the-scenes insights my niece Fly had given me into Tao of Glass, and after meeting its lighting designer, Colin Grenfell, whose work I had admired so much.

Tamzen also told me about the Palestinian Circus coming to Soho Theatre Walthamstow for one weekend only. Oh God, tomorrow would be my only chance to catch them, I thought, just when I had imagined a Saturday breather between shows. Clearly that was not going to happen. Circus every damn day.

Meanwhile, co-director Michaela O’Connor was gathering audience reactions on camera. I was half-tempted to dodge her, much to Tamzen and Craig’s amusement. I struggle with that kind of spontaneity. I dry up. But either I caught myself or Michaela caught me, and I managed a few sentences. Later, once I had had time to reflect, I realised it was very simple really.

Do. Not. Miss.

Sand is on at the Edinburgh Fringe in the Main Hall of Summerhall Arts 6-17 August (not 12 August)

Book tickets here: https://festival.summerhallarts.co.uk/events/sand/

Lead photo credit: Roy Riley www.thelowry.com
Website: www.kookensemble.com  @kook_ensemble on Instagram

Chapter 244: On vulnerabilty

"OK, what are you sad about, Lucy?"

Taken aback, I searched for an answer. Life doesn't get much better than this. Here I was in a cafe in Walthamstow with a very dear friend, thoroughly enjoying her company and conversation after seeing the most fabulous Palestinian circus show, Step and a Half (I'll get to that in the next post). The window of Ganashe had caught our eye with its trompe l'oeil of fruit that was actually pure patisserie. An edible pair of ballet shoes called to mind the ticket I have next weekend to see Carlos Acosta at the Royal Ballet. We were drawn in, and a statue of Laurel and Hardy on the counter confirmed that this really was the place to clown around with our food. The woman behind the counter wore a hijab, serving up Cordon Bleu délices, Arabic floating in the background, French pâtisserie and another language and culture layered together. 

I chose a passion fruit, in honour of passion fruit drink I'd snapped up and necked down that morning post parkrun, called Guilty Passion. What's yours? I had wondered on Instagram. I have a fair few, circus obviously, but I don't feel remotely guilty about that. My friend, also Lucy, opted for a nice pear.

So what was the matter? I feel vulnerable, I began. In the past 24 hours I have set my profile on Instagram to public, for circus companies to share on stories I post to spread the word, especially with many off to Edinburgh Fringe in the offing. But that doesn't come naturally to me. I've been a teacher for six years with all social media locked down. Private lives should absolutely not be shared with students, though I like to think now that if any were to come across my account it would simply inspire them to get up and out of their comfort zone. I practice what I preach.

I make mistakes though. My friend Lucy had been to see the Tao of Glass as well, and as we discussed it in the cafe, along with Step and a Half, I realised how incomplete my post was, and how it could do with a good edit. I'd left the house legging it to Soho Theatre but had clocked that in the past 24 hours since posting it had over 500 hits, and dear lord, I haven't got it right yet. It was clunky, this piece that means so much to me on a personal level. And then I'd shared on Instagram a friend's photo of the final bow. I was not worried about the theatre injunction on taking footage during performance, as it was taken of the curtain call, but chatting to Lucy with her outside eye, I realised that the photos did not do justice to the beauty of the show, and would do nothing to entice and encourage people to check it out. A quick edit later removed them, but again, I felt uncomfortable that they had been up overnight.

I was also still reeling from a blunder I had made post show at the Palestinian Circus, when I had mistaken one female performer for another afterwards and launched into a well-meaning supportive accolade before she gently had to correct me on my mistake. I was mortified. As a teacher, I pride myself on names and noticing every individual student. As a blogger, the care and craft I put into my writing is dependent on my skills of observation. But recently I have felt myself slipping. Is it overwhelm, too many shows, too many ideas, lost in words? Is it something darker? I had just seen Kook Ensemble's SAND at Jacksons Lane again the day before pre Edinburgh Fringe (see chapter 234 - click here and response to show chapter 225 - click here), where the wife is slowly losing herself to dementia, and the spinning spirals of disintegrating sand balls represent so powerfully the sense of loss of self to the windmill of her memories. Or is it simply menopausal brain fog? I wondered about that to friends at the Lido this morning after introducing myself to a friend, who lifted her glasses up and looked at me: "It's me, Lucy!" To be fair, it had been a while. I then went on to ask about her twins, too quick to name them, using the name of another set of twins, same age, another friend. Someone pass me the shovel. "It's not fair," I said to my friends later, "I used to be good at this, how does Coach Mel do it?" Mel being the legend behind Open Air Fit, who never forgets a face, a name, an instant. It is staggering. They laughed, and both automatically said, in impressively in unison "Men don't get brain fog, Lucy!" Still, Mel is in a league of his own.

Still, there is that. I am religious about creatine in my coffee to help my brain function. Maybe if I stopped worrying so much that would free up brain power to actually engage.

But consciousness, coma, potential loss of memory, the true death for me, is very much at the forefront of my mind with the shows I have seen this week, and what they have triggered. And the news of death, like Glen Hansard's (chapter 242 - click here). And then seeing this Palestinian show, such a celebration, a resistance in the face of tragedy, and the thought of all the suffering in the world, beyond borders, well, that got to me too.

So I am circling back to images and events that made an impression. The trompe l'oeil and the trompe langue, my own tongue slips, caught gently, yet still caught out. The continuation of an Arabic atmosphere in a French patisserie post Levantine show, and from there, thinking about levadura, yeast, that raising agent, uplifting, the yearning for hope, ¡ojalá! inshallah, may it be so. A Pizza Pilgrims box at press night for Tao with its caption "This is how we dough it" reminding me of Riss Oblensky's Stinky Little Pilgrim (see chapter 238 - click here), milestones and the journey of the second half of life. Sand spinning through a juggler's fingers as a woman loses her grip on reality. 

None of these pieces match. That's rather the point. I wrote about Glass on Friday, re-edited it Saturday, and here I am again on Sunday, still circling. Tao of Glass brings the practice of kintsugi into play as metaphor, the gold that holds a broken thing together without pretending it was never broken. I don't think I understood, writing that, how quickly I'd need the same idea turned on myself, not on a show I'd watched, but on a week of grieving the death of a musician who felt so familiar, oversharing and undersharing, getting names wrong, and wondering if any of it meant something worse than tiredness, like a radio tower picking up all sorts of frequencies and trying to make sense of them before transmitting the programme.

Maybe that's the real call here. To be present, rather than three steps ahead, already drafting the next post, the next caption, before I've finished living this one.

Still time to catch Palestinian Circus "Step and a half" at Soho Theatre Walthamstow today, Sunday 2 August at 2.30pm, and then at Edinburgh Fringe. 

Chapter 243: The Tao of Glass

A paper hat becomes a boat on a river. Conical light is framed by three rings, each smaller than the last: three levels of consciousness. Tao of Glass is Phelim McDermott's decades-long love letter to Philip Glass, part memoir, part meditation, tracing his creative life as a director and performer alongside Glass's music and, underneath it all, the spirit of the Tao Te Ching: the questions that circle rather than resolve, the idea that the way forward is often the way back, that beauty can be found in the liminal spaces and golden stitching between imperfect fragments.

It was the circularity of it all that stayed with me longest. The revolving stage. A quiet nod to the first Glass album purchased, and to vinyl itself: round and round, the needle finding the groove. Causality and connection drawn as a spiral rather than a line. Mortality, too, not as an ending but as a helix, memories overlapping and doubling back on themselves, the same phrase returning in a different octave.

While the narrative arc centres on an elemental hero worship and father and son dynamic, I felt something else moving underneath it. I thought of the women whose vision had shaped this world without necessarily taking centre stage: director Kirsty Housley, who helped shape Phelim's fragments of memory, dream and story into a coherent whole, not an easy task I imagine, to direct a director; costume and set designer Fly Davis, who gives physical form to the show's circular logic, allowing objects, performers and ideas to return transformed; and puppet-maker Lyndie Wright, who created the wondrous boy puppet that her daughter Sarah, the puppetry director, and her team brought so vividly to life. A theatre made, in no small part, by women working quietly at its centre.

If you love Glass, or have ever asked a real question about the creative process, or about the meaning of life itself, this is the show, the signpost, the Way. Glass's son Ridley is quoted as describing the music of Glass as "calm and dangerous", and that is exactly the undertow of the piece itself. It drags you under quietly, before depositing you back on the shore of your own consciousness.

"Find out what the rules are, and then break them," says Sean Kempton, which is funny, as I'll be seeing him later today at Jacksons Lane in Kook Ensemble's SAND. So I'm breaking a few rules of my own here, jumping out of the chronology of this circus journey, with half a dozen posts still unwritten about recent circus shenanigans, to talk about last night instead.

I went on opening night, then went back for the press-night encore. Because Once is never enough.

Theatres are often haunted. I have felt that first-hand over the years. But what about the ghosts the audience brings with them? That was the question I found myself turning over as Phelim McDermott began reminiscing about his own theatrical ghosts, from Albert Finney to Laurence Olivier to the spectres of unfinished business, of the show that never got made.

I brought my own ghost with me: the memory of Akhnaten, the opera through which I first discovered Philip Glass's music, thanks to this very circus journey and Gandini Juggling's involvement (working back from this post on the link between Akhnaten and Stranger Things, Chapter 227, click here). During lockdown, I watched it obsessively, several times at least, on the LA Opera app, alongside Satyagraha, the other opera Glass and Phelim made together, about the life of Gandhi. Jugglers annotating the music with balls of varying sizes in one; puppets weaving a different kind of magic in the other. The same collaboration finding new shapes each time. And I think my take on the evening was informed not a little by the hero worship of this double act across both operas.

I thought, too, of Matilda Leyser, Phelim's wife, who trained as a trapeze artist. The work she directed, "Me, Mother" at the Roundhouse, Chapter 142, click here (again, the round!), gathered testimonies from circus artists who had had, or were about to have, children. With three young children of my own at the time, hearing the description of a performer's first post-natal experience on the aerial rope after giving birth left a deep impression of the resilience, tenacity, sheer expertise of circus strongwomen.

And then there is my niece, the set designer Fly Davis. Her mother Jenny, my sister, came to live with us when I was ten, so Fly and I grew up under the same roof, more like sisters than aunt and niece, closer in age to each other than I am to Jenny. I remember when Fly flew to New York seven years ago to workshop this piece with Philip and Phelim (I'm not on first-name terms with either of them, it is just easier!). She talked me through the idea of reaching into the world of someone in a coma through music: the reverse of Awakenings. When my own mother was later placed in a medically induced coma and we were told to say our goodbyes, that thought gave me real comfort. Afterwards, Mum spoke of a tunnel, of voices welcoming her, and of her insistence that she needed to go back to look after my father. What about us, Mum? We need you too. But it was Dad she came back for. He lived to a hundred. That concept about music reaching in, well it inspired me that last summer with Dad, to put the roof down on the Mini, load my harp into the back and drive down to play to him by his bedside in the sitting room. He drifted in and out of consciousness, but I like to think that somewhere in him, ever the April Fool, the idea of his most wayward daughter of six, la fille mal gardée, strumming him towards St Peter's gates, would have appealed to his sense of humour. 

I used my iPhone too, playing his old favourites on Spotify: Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Sinatra. We went from "When the Saints" to "My Way", but when Sinatra began, "And now, the end is near", I flinched. Too close to the bone.Some Piaf instead, Dad? He surfaced, opened his eyes."Pardon?" he quipped, rolling a Gallic rrr, without missing a beat. And so we moved on to "Je ne regrette rien". Earlier this year, with Mum, it was another sister who played to her Scottish roots with St Andrew's tunes and Highland reels and in the process, I am sure, conjuring the ghost of a smile. So you see, even before I sat down at Soho Place, this helix of a show had already embedded itself in the DNA of our family psyche.

I also carried into the theatre the weight of having just said goodbye to a job I loved, teaching languages in a secondary school. After six years in the state sector, I had taken my final bow. It had not been an easy decision. I have never been happier in a job: the diversity and energy of my students, the camaraderie of my colleagues. But it had taken its toll on my health, coming on the back of spinal surgery last year and my mother's death earlier this year. Her funeral took place the day before a milestone birthday I had always imagined spending with her. And so I did, in a way, rehearsing her eulogy instead. I mention this not for sympathy, but as context for what came next.

I had planned to see the play with my sister, my niece and my Glass-loving best friend Carolyn, with whom I had seen Akhnaten all those years ago. But over the following fortnight, momentum built. I mentioned it at a colleague's retirement party, as she prepared to move into her own next chapter. Then there was another friend from the science department, with whom I had bonded further over a book called The Physics of Jazz. A teacher from the music department. My harp teacher and her daughter. A career-changing friend I had met while speaking at a Now Teach conference. My qi gong partner and her husband, Park Run volunteer friends, and those made through my children. In short, the creative and the curious. Finally, I persuaded my husband too.

In no time, we were a party of sixteen, meeting in the downstairs bar before processing together to the front row of the first balcony on opening night. I had history with this world, and still had no idea what to expect. The first surprise was how much I laughed.

I had never seen Phelim in person. He was a bomb of warmth and energy, immediately responsive to the audience, who felt instantly at ease calling things out. My husband offered a supportive heckle within the first five minutes. I'm glad he thought better of "Show us your pee-pee", although you need to see the show to understand that it was not entirely gratuitous.

Phelim took it all in his stride, entirely in his element, carrying us through the ebb and flow of his creative life: the serendipity of Glass and, poignantly, Maurice Sendak and the show that never was.

But this was never simply a double act between two giants of their respective creative worlds.

The puppeteers, introduced as Sarah, Janet and Vic, conjured up a spell of shadow play, animating sheets of music and transforming an inverted kettle into a genie. Then there was the wonder of a puppet of a young boy, representing in turn a fictional storybook child, Phelim as a child and Phelim's son Ridley. Fresh from an afternoon with Fly's two young boys, juggling ping-pong balls in a Soho Airbnb, as a great-aunt does, I found that puppet took on another resonance and I wondered what my niece saw as she watched him come to life. I wondered too what it must be like for Matilda, watching her own son represented on stage.

The puppeteers were invisible behind their craft and utterly present within it, each carrying a thread of Phelim's life story, while the musicians riffed and responded alongside them, the Glass river and source feeding all. And then there was the set, the foil. As a friend put it afterwards, "It really sucks you into the story, to the point that you don't notice it's doing it. Then you think about it and realise the story would not have worked in the same way without it."

What I had not fully appreciated until talking afterwards with Kasia, who played violin, was quite how stressful it must have been for the musicians. There was so much to hold in mind at once, weaving around a revolving stage, never missing a cue. Yet it looked entirely effortless, fluid, as though the music were carrying the performers rather than the other way around. The lighting did the same work quietly. Colin Grenfell's design never announced itself, and together the different elements kept circling back to the question beneath everything.

Where does the vision come from?

Where does the music?

Spoiler alert: the river runs through it. A stream of consciousness in which all things connect through deep democracy. The rings again, layer upon layer. A circus of light between consensual reality, dreamland and essence: at once the source and the flow, the genus and the genius of the whole thing. We were swept away.

Afterwards, in the foyer, a friend who had come alone found me, and we simply held on to each other. It was the longest hug I think I have ever given in a theatre. Later, on press night, I watched a critic rise to his feet for the standing ovation. "Write that down in your notebook," Phelim had told him earlier, with a mischievous smile.

And so we all did, in our own way: making a mental note, taking a picture with the mind's camera.

This post, like the evening itself, hasn't quite settled into a single clean line. It's my broken vase, and I'm just in the process of sticking it together with glue, kintsugi style. In circus, I reckon that golden lacquer is what's known as an outside eye. I wish I had one.

Chapter 242: Once, Encore.

Once, there was a love song. Glen Hansard wrote the musical, performed in the film, and has died in a motorbike accident this week. My heart froze. His music, what a gift he gave, he was. The covers now pouring out of Falling, Slowly, on Instagram in tribute. See the first tribute I came across, which was how I found out, by Garron Noone @garron_music. 

Once, in Valencian days of old, I went on a motorbike ride, no helmet, several vodka-fantas to the wind, my arms tight around a crush taking me for a spin, trying to counterbalance (pretty dangerous, I learned fast to lean in!) as we zoomed horizontally round corners at break-neck speed. My best friend was furious. In part at the risk, in part because he observed I never held him like that when on the back of his scooter.

Once does that to you. Takes you on a trip down memory lane of all the lovers that could have been, but weren't, because girl-code, or friend-code, won out.

I had been following Hansard's music for years, ever since the Commitments came out at sixth form, and I would have the music on play, reading my way through the world of Roddy Doyle thanks to my then boyfriend. But there was something about the timing of this film too. The young mother whose husband is working overseas and befriends a busker nursing a broken heart. She brings joy, a lightness, a gentle friendship and a musical partnership develops, but ultimately she stays with her husband.

In a funny old way it is the story of this blog. The fleeting moment of creative connection with a young musician who gifted me a CD of his love songs (not about me, I hasten to add, but I still blushed). The joy of feeling plugged in to that energy, and the need to find an outlet for my own spark, before risking a fire that would burn down my own home, well, that's what led me into the arms of circus.

And in the period of transition, closing one door, to open the next, Once, the Musical came to the West End. I was feeling very raw at the time and found healing through the story and the music. That's the power of the arts. I was not alone. Later I went back with my brother and his wife for an encore, and we ended up on stage at the bar, fully immersed.

I'd just whipped out my phone to search out a couple of lunatic affirmations I had saved on Instagram when I was caught out by the notice of Hansard's death. The news ripped away the scrolling. And then this week, I found myself wondering at all the other people, the histories and herstories, Glen Hansard's music has touched over the years. My daughter and I were lying on the grass in a clearing on the Common gazing up at the extraordinarily low and large Buck Moon, moving into Aquarius, a herald of upheaval, a jolt for old shapes to give way to new ones. We reminisced about our sailing days when we would lie on the trampoline at the bow of La Cigale and look up at Orion's Belt on ocean crossings. Here now, we could make out the constellation Lyra in the night sky, the one where Orpheus' harp meets aerial hoop.

A question formed, in the words of Mary Oliver. I asked my daughter, dear one,

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Her answer is hers to keep. Mine is to share: I'm going to write my heart out...

The Irish Creative Collective is bringing together An Evening for Glen Hansard at The Regent, Islington, on Sunday 2nd August from 6pm. The evening is in aid of the Simon Community, living and working with London's homeless, a charity he very much supported. Entry is free and there is an opportunity for donations, collected throughout the night. https://www.simoncommunity.org.uk/

Chapter 241: Return of THE GODZ

So here we were, my husband and I in the box, if not The Box, for an afternoon of boylesque comedy acrobatics. I’d already had quite a ride. London was in a heatwave and there I was, in a flimsy dress on the back of a bike, hearing my mother’s voice as clearly as when I was 18, warning me that my skimpy French-supermarket sundress would attract the wrong sort of attention.

“Safer on a bike than walking, Mum!” I’d blithely replied back then, before speeding down a hill without brakes, momentarily distracted by another driver approaching a roundabout, then clipping a kerb and catapulting over the handlebars. Within the hour, I was in an ambulance winging its way to A&E, my summer written off. I looked like a circus side show, John Hurt's Elephant Man, people in the street momentarily curious, then turning away, faces a blend of horror, disgust and pity. I turned down offers of a skin graft. These scars, long since faded, told a story after all, and it was only reading Katherine Dunn's "Geek Love" years later, narrated by Olympia, an albino hunchback dwarf, that I punched the air. She got it. 

This time round, in the second half of life, I play it safe. The double-black-diamond ski slopes are a thing of the past. I have more to lose as a mother of three, albeit with one already fledged and another on the verge of university. The point is though, that I understand the adrenaline-fuelled clowning around: the rush of speed, flying through the air, intentional or otherwise, the thin line of balancing acts, all set against calculated risk. It also explains why, even with the safest of bikers, I still wince whenever we weave through traffic or approach a kerb.

Round the corner from the Peacock Theatre stood a giant globe of a map. I posed for a photo. “She’s got the whole world in her hands…” popped into my head, the happy-clappy melody of my school days, educated by Southern Irish nuns. I gave thanks to my guardian angel and St Christopher, not to mention my blessed husband, for arriving safely. Now, though, it was time to park my religion, so I thought, along with the bike, and embrace the divine comedy of Greek deities.

From our vantage point in the gods, I watched a group of friends in full-on togas take their seats in the stalls, in high spirits. Clearly repeat visitors, their arrival signalled that we were in for a feel-good, irreverent ride that leaves audiences coming back for more, whoever or whatever they fancy. Head First Acrobats came to the Peacock trailing serious pedigree too, with multiple Fringe World, Adelaide Fringe and Melbourne Fringe awards behind them. This crowd knew exactly what they had come for.

The curtain rose on a pose of statuesque buff Godz: Dionysos (AJ Saltalamacchia), Apollo (Thomas Gorham) and their cousin Hercules (Cal Harris), with Cupid (Liam Dummer) completing the original four. The cast has now expanded to include Matt Piva’s Hermes, adding another god to the mischief.

What followed was a torrent of circus skills: pyramid acrobalances, Hermes basing Apollo with Cupid perched on top in a three-high; Dionysos rotating around the bar table in a high-octane juggling sequence, a flow I loved; and then another, with Apollo pouring Hercules a cup of wine while holding a one-handed inversion on a stand.

Then Hercules, gratifyingly, got his whip out.

The play with expectation was part of the trick: he extinguished a candle with expert timing, then let the audience in on the sleight of hand that had made it look so impressive. There was knife throwing, with Dionysos hurling blades at Apollo, and chair stacking, Cupid crouching high above the stage before winging his way back down. Then came the most ridiculous ladder act, Hercules balancing on top of a freestanding ladder before, bloody hell, performing a handstand on it. No trick there, just sheer tradecraft, undercut by the comedy of a saboteur waiting in the wings to steal his thunder.

“But what was it all about, Mum?” my youngest asked afterwards. What’s the story, morning glory?

That really kicked in during the second half. Dust sheets covered the statuesque Godz, and in came Hercules with a feather duster to give them a spring clean. Move over, Ken Dodd’s giggle stick. You can imagine the innuendo and flossing that followed as each was revealed, in turn, to be stark bollock naked, clutching a circular gold tray to protect his modesty, the only time I shall use that word in connection with these guys.

The tray, that is.

Overhead, Zeus thundered his outrage at the Homerotic monkeying around between the cousins and delivered his verdict: Hercules was to be dragged off to Hades for punishment. Somewhere amid this divine chaos came Apollo's aerial turn on a single-point dance trapeze. His outfit suggested a Percy Jackson hooded street look crossed with a hint of S&M, while the head-balancing, spins, speed and choreography were out of this world.

But Hades, Zeus decided, was not punishment enough. It was time to take matters a step further and pack Hercules off to Christian Hell.

At this point, he was tormented by three flying nuns, Rihanna’s “S&M” blaring, no less. Someone in wardrobe has a sense of humour and the costumes, by designer Chelsea Angell, deserve their own mention too: equal parts glitter, camp and precision. Hermes, in a leather harness and shorts, blended parkour with poi-style hellfire spinning, and it was insane. The heat was certainly rising to a crescendo.

You possibly need to be a cradle Catholic with a particularly dark sense of humour to appreciate the full force of the final punishment. I shall leave that to your imagination. But it did take me back to a school trip to Germany as a teenager, when I got chatting to some Turkish lads in Bonn who found us free tickets to a nightclub. Of course, the teachers came along too, and Mother Bernadine’s wimple lighting up under the UV lights struck us all as the perfect clubbing gear, long before I saw footage of Berliners getting into the habit at the KitKatClub.

For the finale, Cupid performed the most beautiful airborne turn in Pleasers. In stature and style, he reminded me of my favourite boylesquer, Danny Ash. See Shhh! Cabaret, Chapter 151 - click here . My heart soared again. It felt inclusive and joyful, putting the elatory and aleatory into celebratory.

I only wish I had access to the playlist for the show. It rocked. They really should put one on Spotify. 

Along with the music, I wish I could remember all the jokes. But while you may forget what someone says, you will never forget how they make you feel. What I remember is my cheeks and belly aching from laughter, and the joy of my husband whooping it up in the audience as much as I was. GODZ is one of those shows that knows exactly who it is flirting with, yet somehow makes everyone in the room, regardless of their persuasion, feel like the target audience.

Afterwards, Hermes was in the foyer, ready for a photo op, and of course I caught his eye and jumped right in to have an arm around me, while my husband, no fan of playing photographer, stepped up and snapped us anyway. Hermes had done his job and delivered the message: the Godz were smiling and watching over me.

I left with a huge grin, feeling protected, energised and convinced that life did not get much better than this.

Outside, the world shone that bit more brightly, and my husband announced that we’d take the scenic route home. Being Pride month, there was rainbow bunting through the streets and the embassies were all flying their flags, with a particularly large banner outside the Spanish Embassy making me especially proud of the language I teach.

So here's to joy, inclusivity and sex appeal for all. The colours of my life, as Barnum might say, and the greatest show on Earth.

And now that Christopher Nolan’s own epic saga has landed in cinemas, IMAX and all, I’d say GODZ was the essential foreplay: a Bodyssey before the Odyssey, the gods misbehaving in the flesh long before Matt Damon starts his ten-year trip home.