Reviews 2018
Reviews 2018
✭✭✭✩✩
by the company, directed by Justine Cargo
Second Star Productions, Toronto Fringe Festival, Annex Theatre, 736 Bathurst St., Toronto
July 6-14, 2018
Second Star Productions has the great idea of blending circus arts, dance and magic with the imagery from famous horror movies. If only the execution lived up to the concept this could be a super show.
The loose plot starts with the old cliché of a car breaking down near an isolated cabin. The cliché continues when the lone young woman driver (Kiriana Stanton) encounters the inhabitants lip-synching to songs from The Rocky Horror Show led by drag version of Pennywise from It (Daniel Bowen). As Stanton fights her way through the cabin demonstrating her stage combat skills, she witnesses and even participates in various circus and magic acts. Best are magician Ryan Brown’s plucking fans of cards from thin air, Emma Donnelly in a complex routine on aerial silks and Zel Tyrant in a painful-looking yet innovative exercise on aerial chains.
The show references nearly 20 movies either through movement and images or, less well, through cheap masks. Justine Cargo’s direction tends to be clunky rather than smooth, and the acts themselves lack the final degree of finesse to hide the effort, which is necessary for the performances completely to dazzle.
Still, the show demonstrates that the potential for a new kind of dark cirque is already here.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in NOW Magazine on July 10, 2018.
Photo: Kiriana Stanton, Phil Skala, Ryan Brown and Emma Donnelly. ©2018 Chantal Ryanne.
For tickets, visit https://fringetoronto.com.
2018-07-10
Circus Shop of Horrors