★★★★

“It is a wonder, without a doubt, and delightfully potty”

Australian company Circa has intertwined the myths of Swan Lake and The Ugly Duckling to create a muscular and gasp-inducing circus ballet that is rich in both beauty and spectacle.

“D-u-c-k!” one is tempted to shout, seeing the toned performers flung perilously across the expansive stage of the Royal Festival Hall. This is where art, performance and extreme physicality come together to push back the boundaries of what’s possible in the bruising realm of acrobatic storytelling.

As the performers swing from billowing wraps, make towers that almost touch the lighting rigs, tumble from ridiculous heights, and twist bodies until surely they must break, there are sharp intakes of breath across the auditorium – along with sympathetic twinges in dozing deltoids. Meanwhile, somewhere in a corner of the Southbank Centre, a health and safety manager is having a quiet meltdown.

These are daffy ducks. They are dexterous ducks, dazzling ducks and, above all, daring ducks.

Here’s the story in outline, taking the ornithological inexactitude of the original and giving it a tweak and twist.

At a palace celebration for the Prince’s birthday, the revelry ends abruptly. The Prince meets the Ugly Duckling, and with Cupid’s intervention, they fall in love. However, their romance is overshadowed by societal barriers. Instead, the more suitable and wily Black Swan captivates the Prince’s heart.

But fortunes change when the Ugly Duckling discovers she is, in fact, a swan herself. And here comes the modern twist – it is the Black Swan and White Swan, two sapphic swans a-swooning, who fall in love, leaving the Prince in a flap.

It’s best to know the rudiments of the story going in. This wordless show is about the sheer artistry and physicality of the human form (those mince pies seeming twice as inhibiting now). But the whispers around the auditorium suggest the youngsters like to know roughly what’s going on and who’s who.

And then, after the climactic nuptials comes the coda, the extended – and probably unnecessary – third act. The swansong, if you will. Once the story is wrapped up, we’re given a meta-view of the performers, stripping off and breaking down the set. In Fame School bursts of exuberance, everyone has a last chance to do a party piece. It gets a little raunchy here, but tongue-in-cheek.

Director Yaron Lifschitz has it right when he calls this superior mix “something new – neither quite ballet nor circus… moving yet accessible”.

It is a wonder, without a doubt, and delightfully potty.

This Christmas, make a change and put duck on the menu.

HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS

Arcola Theatre

★★★★

“Although lacking the traditional sleigh bells and Santa, it does have sufficient nostalgia, silliness and giggles to fill a panto-shaped hole”

In case you’re wondering, “Hold on to your butts” is a line from Samuel L Jackson as he is about to reboot the computer systems of Jurassic Park in the 1993 ground-breaking monster flick.

It’s a terrible title for a fun evening but, I suppose, theatre company Recent Cutbacks can’t stick “Jurassic Park” anywhere near the poster for legal reasons.

But the copyright holders need not fear for their intellectual property. It’s in safe hands. This madcap shot-for-shot re-creation of the mega-dinosaur smash is made by people who adore the movie. And love movie-making.

It’s 10 years since this slick whistlestop tribute opened in New York City, later wowing crowds at the Edinburgh Fringe and now setting up at the Arcola under the direction of Kristin McCarthy Parker. Although lacking the traditional sleigh bells and Santa, it does have sufficient nostalgia, silliness and giggles to fill a panto-shaped hole.

This production takes you back. Not just to Steven Spielberg’s genius film, but to your garage, or garden, or park. Where on a rainy Sunday, with nothing else to do and the wifi down, you and your mates stumble upon a cardboard box from Tesco which once held pineapples. The box becomes everything – castle, racing car, majestic pirate ship scything the seven seas…

Here, two performers and a sound artist perform a similar feat of ingenuity and imagination in this lo-fi, charming and very funny evocation of the original.

What’s that you say? A herd of serene brachiosaurus sweeping across the plains of Isla Nublar? Here you go. A mosquito trapped in a piece of amber? A barley sugar will suffice, no?

Performers Jack Baldwin and Laurence Pears tread the fine line between slavish adoration of the original and good-natured fanboy parody. On the sidelines, but equally a star, is foley artist Charlie Ives recreating T-Rex roars, rainstorms, computer beeps, creaking branches and everything else that helps make the fun funnier.

The humour is often of the Airplane! variety – aforementioned (pre-Pulp Fiction) Samuel L Jackson’s growing smoking habit an example – and much of the joy is in the anticipation, figuring out how two men and some props retrieved from a trash can are going to make a car fall through a tree, or create the tension of a raptor hunt. And there’s much humour to be mined in the script too – such as Jeff Goldblum’s wry “chaotician” delivering his memorable brow-knitted cod-philosophies studded with Pinteresque ‘umms’ and pauses. Or that perky and patronising strand of DNA explaining how cloning works.

It helps to know something about the film because the sheer challenge of miniaturisation does lend itself to some confusion, but the iconic scenes are all there as anchors – the ripples on the cup of water, T-Rex going to town on a toilet-bound Donald Gennaro, probing a big pile of dino-poop, sweaty Wayne Knight, girlie Laura Dern…

This is the perfect night for anyone who’s ever seen a stack of cone party hats and thought – three of them, artfully placed – there’s my triceratops!

DUCK POND

Royal Festival Hall

★★★★

“It is a wonder, without a doubt, and delightfully potty”

DUCK POND

Royal Festival Hall

Reviewed on 19th December 2024

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Pia Johnson

Previously reviewed at Southbank venues:

DUCK POND

DUCK POND

DUCK POND

HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS

Arcola Theatre

★★★★

“Although lacking the traditional sleigh bells and Santa, it does have sufficient nostalgia, silliness and giggles to fill a panto-shaped hole”