From the name of the show you’d assume this was a tribute show to The Greatest Showman, and you’d kinda be right, but not entirely. Certainly they’ve leaned into that brand recognition and everyone’s familiarity with the Hugh Jackman movie to help sell this show.
So, first thing you need to do is manage your expectations going in. The show isn’t a retelling of The Greatest Showman, but does include a bunch of songs from it. It also has songs from other famous musicals like Hairspray, Moulin Rogue, Rocketman, Mamma Mia and others.
There is basically no dialogue and essentially no story, but for a tiny thread of a story that runs throughout the show for one character.
The show starts with a small set wheeled out to the front of the stage with a silent movie character sat in an all black and white room. We hear a radio commercial to the effect of ‘add some colour to your bland day’ or something like that. He then grabs an oversized phone and orders a TV and for the rest of the show this silent film character sits at the back of the stage as if he’s watching all the other acts on television.
The silent film character never speaks but does reoccur between acts and does some circus routines, magic tricks and a decent amount of audience interaction. This is done really well with a combination of gestures and blowing on a whistle. Many of the early tricks and routines are basic and will be familiar to anyone who have seen old school magicians or even old movies like Abbott and Costello – a magical teleporting bottle routine in particular jumped out as me having seen Bud Abbott and Lou Costello do something similar.
The routines get more elaborate as the show goes on, but these are mainly to allow a break between songs, and give time for cast costume changes I’m sure.
As for the musical numbers the show starts things off with a few hits from The Greatest Showman, which whilst very crowd pleasing was a blessing and a curse for the show. Starting with a version of This is the Greatest Show presenting many of the cast doing tricks and acrobatics just as in the movie is familiar but on stage it doesn’t reach the same spectacle as the movie can. It’s still very good, but whilst it was an obvious number to start the show with it instantly let’s you know that whilst this may turn out to be a very good or great show, it definitely won’t be…the greatest.
After they go through a few songs from The Greatest Showman it becomes evident that this isn’t a musical with storylines or characters and is more of a cabaret/variety act with songs, dances and circus style acrobatics which to be fair to it is more in line with what High Jackman’s character PT Barnum was a promoter of in real life and in the film.
From here we go into the next set of songs which were from Hairspray, and at this stage the show did lose me slightly. Whilst very well done, it did feel like scenes from that musical and had a disconnect with the circus theme.
After this point the show was a blend of musical theatre numbers, acrobatics/aerialist acts it’s where people would hang from things and twirl and spin and then some other circus acts like juggling or using big hoops or cubes to spin, and dance around with.
One thing that is a shame is that the poster and trailer for the show highlight flame based acts where people are juggling fire and such like, but these weren’t part of the show we saw at the Wyvern in Swindon. Maybe they couldn’t do it at this venue for health and safety reasons, or maybe they don’t crack this out for smaller venues. Who knows, but it was certainly something that would have added to the variety and spectacle of the show.
Some of the highlights included an aerialist act where a performer ended up dangling by her neck, a man and a woman where she would handstand on his hands to show incredible balance and the silent film character wearing a giant balloon on his head…for reasons I’m not quite sure of.
I did really enjoy the show, but part of me feels that the heights of act 2 should have been the heights of act 1, and then a new act 2 should have had more of the same a few new ideas that were either more spectacular or added variety. I say this just because act 1 was good, but clearly they were saving their best stuff until act 2. That’s understandable, but it just meant that act 1 didn’t have the variety or wow moments that act 2 did.
Conclusion
It was a good variety style circus show, and if you haven’t seen this kind of show before or often before it is well worth seeing. It definitely tips the balance more towards being musical theatre than circus, so if you just want circus this won’t quite scratch the itch, but as a variety show with songs and dances mixed in with some comedy and some circus stuff it’s fun for all ages. It’s a shame the production we saw didn’t have the flame based acts like fire juggling, but it was still a fun show.
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