Ik heb geen Nederlandse recensie kunnen vinden van deze show dus heb ik er eentje in het Engels. Deze recensie is geschreven door Graham Watts en is in Juli 2011 op de site gezet. De recensie staat op deze site : http://www.ballet.co.uk/magazines/yr_11/aug11/gw_rev_circa_wunderkammer_0711.htm

Circa “Wunderkammer”

In an increasingly crowded marketplace for cabaret-style circus shows any new production has to be extra special to stand out from the crowd. And it isn't any longer just enough to put great showmanship, brilliant gravity-defying tricks and clownish humour into a proscenium setting. When a new show comes along declaring itself to be a Wunderkammer, literally a wonder-room but, more particularly, a reference to Renaissance Europe's fascination for a cabinet of curiosities, then it becomes a metaphor for exceptional circus skills that raises the bar of expectation even higher. These ensembles often come in sevens – one major Canadian outfit is even called the 7 doigts de la Main and sure enough there should have been seven in Circa. Delivering a room full of circus curiosities to fill 85 minutes must be a tough ask when you have your full team to reply upon, but Circa's capabilities were cruelly cut short by Scott Grove's broken thumb and since they came all the way from Brisbane in Australia, a last-minute substitution was not on the cards.

With no announcement of this withdrawal, it is to Circa's great credit that most of the audience would never have realised they were a man down. The show must have been significantly rearranged to fit the remaining sextet (three guys and three girls) emphasising all the more the most impressive aspect of Wunderkammer in the group's remarkable diversity. This was not a show where tiny girls are thrown around by burly strongmen: these tough girls were often the catchers and carriers, frequently taking the men's weight as absolute equals. Unlike traditional circus shows, each performer had a vast smörg?sbord of talents without being typecast into certain roles or specialities, although everyone got a chance to show off their very best tricks.

Sexual frisson, wrapped up in the humour of burlesque, smouldered through the show, involving ongoing bouts of dressing and disrobing, which is perhaps not surprising since one of Director Yaron Lifschitz's earlier circus shows was simply called Naked. In Wunderkammer, Jesse Scott stripped to a thong while hanging from the high trapeze by various parts of his anatomy; a voluptuous redhead, Freyja Edney, morphed her clothing into a skimpy burlesque outfit complete with nipple-tassles; and the whole ensemble gradually disrobed to matching black underwear in a slow-moving finale. Usually, performers return to their dressed state for the curtain calls but not this bunch who came back several times to take the rousing applause with bum cheeks still happily on display. Perhaps this is the product of their supreme self-confidence in taught, muscular bodies or perhaps it's just an Australian thing?

I greatly admired the show's unflagging flow and momentum (even more admirable given the missing team member) and there were several stand-out highlights, most particularly in the amazing aerial cord lisse skills (acrobatic poses and balances on a vertical rope) and strength of Emma McGovern (who also shared a fascinating counterbalancing trapeze duet with Scott); the hand balancing of Emma Serjeant (the possessor of one of the largest tattoos I have ever seen) who also did a balancing routine en pointe that might even have made Tamara Rojo's eyes water; the multiple hula-hooping of Edney; and the dynamic mix of breakdancing, acrobatics and hand balances by Lewis West. Perhaps the most impressive sight was one of the girls doing the splits with each foot resting on a different head as her two "supporters" moved further and further apart! I believe that the cabinets of curiosities referenced by Wunderkammer contained a mixture of the beautiful, the absurd and the grotesque and the latter was certainly represented by a stomach-churning sequence in which the whole ensemble managed to stretch red elastic strings through their nose, down their throats and out of the mouth, accompanied by sundry disgusting hawking noises, then pulling it vigorously backwards and forwards. In terms of Wunderkammer this must be the circus equivalent of a pygmy's decapitated shrunken head mounted in a glass case.

I would have liked to know more about these interesting people: the information supplied not only failed to tell us of Grove's incapacitation but anything at all about the ensemble's personnel, which was a shame. This was a sexy, uber-talented group that kept up the tour of their cabinet of curiosities with bundles of humour (mostly from Darcy Grant) and outrageous tricks. Not everything worked but, given the overall slickness, I suspect that those few parts that didn't gel were probably last-minute additions or changes necessitated to overcome the missing man. At 6/7ths of capacity this was still a great show, but I'd love to see it with the full hand of trickery.