Taking My Monkeys to The Circus

Gandeys Circus is one of the longest established touring circuses in the UK, and have a reputation stretching back to the 1800's. It's a fascinating insight into the history of circus in the United Kingdom, and if you're interested in this sort of thing, check out their blog here.

They've long been known as one of the best shows to catch on tour, and we were excited to get tickets when the show came through Chester recently.

As Taz and I have a background in performance, we're often a little bit underwhelmed when it comes to things like this (although I'll fully admit we both know we couldn't do even the most basic of circus skills!) so I can safely say we were utterly blown away by this show.

Right from the opening, The Hollywood Spectacular show blew us away with a huge cast, dazzling lights, and death-defying stunts.

The touring circus pulls out all of the stops with thrilling aerialists, contortionists, bola dancers and so much more. Oli's eyes were popping right from the start with the aerial sling performer who threw herself around the big top, and Taz was gobsmacked by the bikers inside the steel cage, while I loved the aerial trapeze performers who flew across the ring and the fantastic Spanish dancers who performed with the bolas and drums.

The clown was actually funny, and got the audience involved in all of the jokes, which can sometimes fall a bit flat at shows like this. The constantly changing costumes and music styles added to the sense of spectacle, and we also quite enjoyed watching the stage hands running about the place ensuring that every set piece was rigged and running correctly throughout, which was a choreography in itself!

The only negative, really, was the sound equipment - it was evidently very old which meant that the sound quality was rather poor; too loud and grating, with a really obvious imbalance, which also meant that the performers seemed to sometimes have difficulty hearing the backing tracks themselves. And one or two of the dancers seemed a little unsure of the routines at times, but with such a large cast, and probably cast changes, that's not a big deal and I'm being very nit-picky there!

Gandeys Circus is touring throughout the year, and they have their Halloween Spooktacular show in October as well, which we'd love to catch if it comes back up our way soon.