Show leaps into life

Watch a Cirque du Soleil show, and you quickly run short of superlatives.

The Canadian circus troupe is a spectacular company, a genuine stadium-packer with eye-popping costumes, live music, dry ice, and acrobats that have you ooh-ing and aah-ing with their daring, grace and precision.

True, the shows are sometimes uneven and they can have a mass-produced feel (Cirque du Soleil is more entertainment conglomerate than family firm), but they always leave you marvelling at the strength and agility of

the acrobats. The company returned to London last night for a five-week stint at the Albert Hall, and the near-capacity crowd of families and youngsters seemed thrilled to have them back.

This year's show is Saltimbanco, a string of acts loosely linked by the idea of travelling acrobats, the traditional "saltimbanques" who toured from town to town giving impromptu displays.

Things start with the brightly-coloured clowns mingling with the audience and inviting "volunteers" to clown along with them. Then comes the opening number, a family group of acrobats, a man, woman and child, who perform adagio, the tiny child bobbing between them like a beach ball on waves. Then comes a whiplash fast piece of 16 acrobats running up and around four vertical poles and then diving headlong down them. Then there's wire-walking and juggling, and then bungee acrobatics that look like a very elegant form of sky diving.

The fascinating thing about human circus is the way you can almost feel the thrills you are watching. When, high overhead, the trapeze artists bend their knees and take a huge swing forward, your stomach seems to go with them. And when the acrobats up-end themselves

in a precarious balance, the blood seems to rush to your head with theirs. Circus also deals in stock characters, the strong man, the Romeo, the wimp, and this can grate with the grown-ups, as can the mime, the ear-splitting music, and the hoicking of "volunteers" on to the stage - in fact, everything that children love, although my guess is that the audience has more plants than a garden centre.

Until 9 February. Royal Albert Hall. Box office: 020 7838 3122.

Cirque Du Soleil: Alegria