Velvet. A Divine Discotheque Circus. Directed and created by Craig Ilott. Not suitable for children. The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre. Until May 14. Bookings 6275 2700 or canberratheatrecentre.com.au.
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Velvet is something richer than a short but glorious reminder of the days of disco. Hovering somewhere between the 1970s and a briskly modern variety of circus it has a plot of sorts but is just as inclined to abandon it in favour of an aerial act or something mad with hula hoops. Or a song from Marcia Hines, who presides over the whole caper like a wise mother goddess, warmly singing in magnificently glittering costumes.
A young man (Tom Oliver) in a conservative shirt and tie is gradually led on a much more interesting life path by a group of colourful performers. He will go on to do a version of Stayin' Alive, which has the potential to change forever how we think about that song. By then, however, he too has changed and his costume is very far from a shirt and tie.
Up stage on high a god-like DJ (Joe Accaria) lurks in dark glasses, supplying the music. Downstage there's the fascination of smiling Mirko Kockenberger's carefully controlled handstand work. Rechelle Mansour and Kaylah Attard are the all-singing, all go-go-dancing drivers of much of the show's pace. Emma Goh wears outrageous shoes when she goes aloft for powerful aerial work. Stephen Williams also goes aloft but his air is much more sinister, with a tendency to leather and not much smiling.
There are times when Craig Reid's hula-hoop turns come close to stealing the show with their gentle comedy and at one stage the hoops' spectacular internal lights. Reid has a hugely genial wide-eyed presence and a delight in developing routines with growing numbers of hoops that the audience at first thinks he will not manage.
The circus routines of course call on old patterns but the audience responds with delight. Only a sound system that seemed to struggle on occasion to lift voices above the music on opening night marred what otherwise is a fine show full of glamour and glitter.
It's a little like a mini-Cirque Du Soleil, where a theme carries the evening, but this show never quite allows the balancing and the flying and the hula-hooping to overpower the young man's journey of discovery. In fact the circus acts show him something of the possibilities of life and encourage him to fly in his own way.
By the end the audience had taken to dancing, if not in the aisles, at least in the seat rows. Eighty minutes of Velvet is sure to lift anyone's spirits.
