Conceived and performed by: Head First Acrobatics
Introduced by their slightly peeved father, Zeus, four scantily-clad Grecian heroes enter the stage of the humid, buzzing Brighton Spiegeltent. Apollo, god of Sun; Dionysus, god of Wine; Cupid, god of Love; and Hercules, mere demigod, arrive in the human form of four Aussie acrobats from the award-winning Melbourne-based Head First Acrobats. The show that follows combines the knockabout raucous energy of bored cousins on summer holiday with the poised physicality of elite athletes. With equal parts titillation and spectacular stunts, there’s plenty to get the crowd gasping and cheering.
Starting off in a celestial Mount Olympus setting, the gods lark about, balancing on each other and creating human towers with ease. The conceit that they look like men but they’re really gods with special powers is an apt parallel for their acrobatic skill, and that almost superhuman power is on full display when one of them balances five chairs on top of each other in an unlikely interlocking tower, climbing to the top of them, only to begin joking with the crowd when he is at his most precarious.
Hercules, the only one of them who isn’t a real god, has skills that seem more earthly perhaps but not necessarily less impressive. He grabs a ladder as if he’s just got it out of his garden shed, climbs it, leaning on thin air, balancing on the top rung, catching Cupid’s arrows and juggling them as he does it.
Taking the symbolism of his more lowly position in a different direction, Hercules’ three half-brothers become statues he must polish. The cloths covering them slip off revealing them naked apart from strategically positioned golden plates. Thus follows a sequence of cheeky clowning where the gods strive to keep their private parts concealed in more and more inconceivably complicated contortions. It’s scandalous, and like good burlesque, uses the power of suggestion to ramp up the excitement.
When Zeus finds out about Hercules’ naked dancing however he is furious and sends him to see his uncle Hades in the Underworld. Hades doesn’t want him either so after doing some impressive breakdancing to Rammstein, sends him somewhere even worse than the Underworld: Christian Hell. When nuns come to take Hercules away to hell in a sequence soundtracked by Rhianna’s S&M, the show is lifted to a new level of exalted campness, and it feels like the full circle of irreverence is complete.
This is a show that doesn’t take itself seriously, that wants the audience to laugh, gasp and feel aroused all at the same time, and they generally achieved their desired effects. There’s a wide range of circus strength and dexterity on show in the process, with spectacular trapeze and balancing, but also great comedic skill, and It’s all bound together in a pleasingly silly mishmash of cultural references.
Running until 3 June 2023
