This spectacular cirque cabaret, starring the stylish acrobats of The Dust Palace, imagines The Odyssey as Star Trek. Selected island episodes are scrambled into visits to planets, each with its own favourite circus apparatus and sexual energy, and the journey device gracefully stitches the impressive and pretty physical tricks into one story.
Performing in at least six items, Eve Gordon gives a masterclass in incredible stamina, effortless strength, balance, beauty - and comedy. Instead of climbing the walls trying to get away from her suitors, her Penelope climbs ropes in sensuous orgies, to the sound of a torchlight cover of Beyonce's Crazy in Love. With one particular suitor (Commonwealth Games gymnast Carlin Brown), she later performs a superb adagio - full of creative lifts and interesting tableaux.
On Cyclops' planet - where else? - Zach Washer spins energetically in the Cyr mono-wheel, like it's a gigantic eye, while Heath Jones amuses as Cyclops himself in platform hooves. (Cyclops' maudlin song, however, adds little to proceedings.)Cyclops' frisky, ditzy and startled lambs (Gordon and Geof Gilson) frolic hilariously, while the possessive Circe (Edward Clendon, oozing stage presence) is reimagined as a camp queen with a Poseidon net. In his one acrobatic moment, the hapless Captain Odysseus (Mike Edward) shares an upside-down Spiderman kiss with Circe then finds himself entangled in her web. Great touch.
Campbell Farquhar's ancient-futuristic spaceship blueprint screens are fun and Chantelle Gerard's attractive costumes don't distract from the bodies beautiful. The dialogue was slightly uneven, sometimes pseudo-serious, and one suspects co-creator Thomas Sainsbury of adding a certain hokey-ness - but it usually works, as when Odysseus comically banters with the squeaky Sirens on the lyra aerial hoop: "Let's do this!"
Pricey and aimed at corporate Christmas events; get the boss to pay.
