Cirque du Soleil: Kooza, Albert Hall - circus review

Cirque du Soleil arrives in London every January to remind us that we’ve eaten far too many mince pies and it’s time to get back to the gym. What those paying top dollar to see the Canadian company’s world-beating brand of ultra-slick modern circus want is to gaze in awe at stomach-churning levels of gravity- — and biology- — defying skill, and it is here that director David Shiner’s Kooza soars.

For starters, there’s an elegant unicyclist unperturbed by a young woman standing unaided on his head. A contortionist trio had me groaning in disbelief at the tangle of limbs it bends itself into. A quartet of high-wire performers skips, and then cycles, along wires of different heights with, initially at least, no safety net.

Kooza’s biggest draw is the primus inter pares of circus acts, the Wheel of Death. The simple swinging momentum of this towering contraption is vertigo-inducing enough — and then the two performers run around the outside edges of the wheels.

I just wish Cirque shows didn’t have to include a customary dose of mirth-free clowning. Send out the clowns, and this is circus heaven.