Reviews

Edinburgh review: No Show (Summerhall)

Ellie Dubois’ circus show is a critique of the way circus frames female performers

Five women in skimpy outfits strike poses, their arms extended, their fingers flexed. The shapes they cut are all circus staples – glam, sexy and strong – but you’re as likely to find them in silhouette on the front of a strip joint as you are up on a stage. Instead of smiling, inviting applause and admiration, these women are staring us down.

Ellie Dubois’ circus show is a critique of the way circus frames female performers, their skills and their bodies. It asks what women are allowed to be and do in contemporary circus. Why do men get to tumble, while women take to the trapeze? Why do they smile more often than they speak? The title, No Show, implies a failure to turn up – or rather a refusal – but it’s also a statement of intent. This is not something to be gawped at; not a spectacle, but a statement. At one point, the five of them stop for a slow doughnut. It’s the most sugary sit-in you’ve ever seen.

Dubois deconstructs the art form with aplomb. Importing techniques from experimental theatre – risk, failure and exhaustion – No Show challenges conventions that are largely let be. As Lisa Chudalla spins on the Cyr wheel, a heavy, human-size ring of iron, we’re talked through the dangers the discipline entails – broken ankles, cracked skulls, a total loss of control. Kate McWilliam attempts the world speed cartwheel record, ending breathless and dizzy and unsuccessful – again – and Francesca Hyde hangs and spins from her hair. Routine after routine recalls the spectacles of Sea World: performing animals turning their tricks. When Alice Gilmartin tries to talk to us, she’s silenced and shoved back onto her balancing canes. Don’t speak, do tricks. Look pretty, not pained. And smile. Whatever you do, do it with a smile.

It’s a question of agency, and Dubois smartly extends that out of the room. When Michelle Ross performs her best trick – a somersault on the swing trapeze – she has to do so in mime. Their venue’s too small. Bigger stages, better equipment, safety regulations – it all costs money. How then, Dubois demands, do circus artists gain independence? How do they emerge and own their own work? To be at their best – no, just to do what they do, what they’ve trained to do – they have to join larger companies and submit to someone else’s rules, vision and terms. That lands like a thunderbolt here at the Fringe. This free-for-all festival’s not that free at all.

Those constraints, inevitably, hold No Show back. For all it subverts and sidesteps expectations, it struggles to stop your breath as the best circus can, and though contemporary circus hasn’t fully dealt with these issues, it can be more aware than No Show allows. Some of its arguments feel fairly routine, but when it finds its own footing – with care, collaboration and wit to spare – No Show finds its voice as well.

No Show runs at Summerhall until August 27, 16:15.

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