Circus Oz is coming to town

A parade of men in scarlet soldier-boy outfits with matching fluorescent underwear marches into a Reading theatre. A gyrating woman in towering white platform shoes starts swinging her funky stuff to a soundtrack that segues a howdy-doody, country tune into some hard-core hip-hop.

Berkshire's eight-year-olds can hardly believe their luck. They thought they'd come to see a bunch of uni-cycling, red-nosed clowns but what they've got instead is Circus Oz - an all-Australian, gender-bending phenomenon of "welders, jugglers, fire-eaters, feminists, actors, agitators and aerialists who thought that they could change the world".

Mike Finch, journalist-turned-juggler-turned-artistic director of Circus Oz, was only nine when their story began in Melbourne in 1978. Back then, Antipodean radical theatre was about rediscovering a genuinely Australian voice, one that rejected European and North American influences.

Fed up with the limitations of this avant-garde scene, a group of actors, poets and comedians decided to learn some new skills. None had worked in the circus before but this wasn't going to hold back keen, socially-committed potential athletes. "If we were going to make radical theatre," says Finch, "we didn't want to play to audiences of 50 somewhere in the suburbs".

These ambitions still apply today, although nowadays the company is an established part of the international circus scene and describes itself not as overtly political but "politicised". At home, there are still plenty of verbal digs about Aboriginal land rights, East Timor and the Queen but the challenge has been to pass this message on to a worldwide audience. Circus Oz has performed everywhere from a glass opera-house in Brazil to a children's festival in Korea.

The radical-collective allure remains and every performer in the 22-strong troupe appears in almost every act in the show as well as agreeing, contractually, to live in the same hotel, fly on the same plane and eat the same food as the others for months on end. "If I had a choice," says Finch, "I'd fly caravans around the world, set them up in the parking lot and have everyone live in them with their possessions, partners and kids and dogs."

The transient lifestyle wouldn't suit everyone, however. The performers are in their late twenties or early thirties, says Finch, because "it's not a job for people who are still trying to work out who they are". People say all the time, 'God, you're so Australian', and I don't know whether it's something about the raucous women in the show, or the fact that we refuse to take ourselves too seriously so that even at the most lyrical moment in the show, someone's pants always have to fall down."

The result is that Baz Luhrmann-style, acid-pink bikinis feature heavily in Circus Oz's constantly changing wardrobe, alongside leopardskins, Afro wigs, hulahoops and easy-listening pants. Glittery posing pouches expose buttocks which have rarely been used to such muscle-clenching musical effect.

"In England you get all sorts of weird stuff in the theatre," says Finch, "but in Australia it's still seen as a high-culture place, so for us to go in and be ratbags, messing around in a posh auditorium, is exciting."

?At Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank, SE1, 22-25 April at 7.45pm, matinees 23, 24 April at 1.45pm. Box office: 020 7960 4242