REVIEW: Super Sunday (Pontio, Bangor)

It might have been a Thursday evening, but Race Horse Company gave its audience a truly Super Sunday with its latest circus show at Pontio, combining all the fun of the fair with more serious religious iconography.

That clash of stylistic approaches can jar a little - one of the last places you'd expect to be confronted with a vivid portrayal of the Crucifixion is a circus show - but you've got to admire their chutzpah. The producers do warn people in advance about the religious imagery ("Super Sunday features irreverent humour and Christian religious motifs. We think the show is most suitable for people aged 12 years to adult") but being forewarned still doesn't quite forearm the audience enough for what they see.

It's not that the Crucifixion scene is offensive, distasteful or disrespectful. In fact, there's a degree of reverence in the lit candles and supplication. It's merely the audacity of shackling someone to a giant cross, then wrapping them up tight in clingfilm, which takes you by surprise. It's not offensive as such, just odd, and it doesn't altogether work.

What does work is pretty much everything else, and it all kicks off with the Finnish Race Horse Company's trademark irreverent humour. Bouncing onto stage in hobby horse outfits by way of introduction to our daring performers, it sets the tone for a show which is both silly and serious, awesome and thrilling. The stage is dressed vaguely like an abandoned fairground, with a merry-go-round, trampolines and a Test Your Strength machine, but this aesthetic theme isn't catered for too much.

French acrobat Odilon Pindat is a truly amazing performer. He's lithe and muscular, and I know that because of the super-skimpy outfit he wears during the human catapult set-piece which leaves nothing to the imagination. But with it, he's funny and sweet and endearing, bringing an elegance to his death-defying feats. For the human catapult trebouchet, he lies on the floor holding a bar which is then catapulted up and across the stage into the air before he crashes into a waiting hammock. It's terrifying and mesmerising to watch.

Pindat is also a dab hand at hammer juggling. It's the type of huge lump hammer you use to Test Your Strength at fairgrounds, but the balancing acrobatics Pindat goes through with it are true heart-in-mouth scary. On the one hand, while you know that health and safety is paramount during these shows, and the performers know exactly what they're doing, you can't help wondering about a scenario where his hand slips and either his or an audience member's head gets caved in.

Danger is an inherent part of the entertainment at these shows, otherwise people wouldn't go to see them. The boys also use nunchakus at one point, which some parents may find themselves questioning (nunchakus are considered offensive weapons in the UK, and their use in public is illegal), and the aforementioned use of clingfilm to tie Mikko Karhu to the wheel of death raises as many doubts as it does laughs. The producers might have recommended that the show is for the over-12s, but there were certainly younger there.

It's the more traditional, straightforward circus skills which thrill the most. Various combinations of performers use two huge trampolines to demonstrate their art in balance and gymnastics, bouncing ever higher and in ever more amusing and eye-boggling poses to put on a truly amazing show. The moment where a trampoline is covered in coloured balls and a performer bounces onto them, sending them flying into the air like an M&M rain shower, is stunning.

There's also a fabulous set-piece with a teeterboard near the top of the show, as the boys see-saw to fantastic heights using each other as counter-balances to increasingly impressive effect. The teeterboard routine is undoubtedly one of the best in the show because it seems to go on longer than you could ever imagine, but certainly not longer than you want. It's an entrancing spectacle.

There's more humour in the appearance of a life-size teddy bear who is reluctantly roped in to taking part in the human cannon trick, and it's tremendous to see the terrified bear fly across the stage like an airborne Pudsey! The bear then runs off into the audience to sit among the giggling children in order to hide from the next trick, but there's no escape for him!

Super Sunday truly is super, make no mistake. It's one of the best circus shows I have ever seen because almost all of the routines induce that delicious feeling of danger and fear mixed with excitement and joy that is so intrinsic in making a show such as this work. The feats the boys pull off are stunning and their laidback humour makes you want to be part of it. Well, almost...

The stats
Performers: Hannu Abonce, Mikko Karhu, Rauli Kosonen, Kalle Lehto, Odilon Pindat, Mikko Rinnevuori
Producer: Anna-Maria Rus & Race Horse Company
Music: Sami Tammela, Ben Rogers
Performed at Pontio, Bangor, April 20th-21st, 2017. Performance reviewed: April 20th, 2017

Links
Race Horse Company website
Crying Out Loud website
Circus Evolution website