LJ Marles in La Clique at Leicester Square Spiegeltent, London. Picture: Craig Sugden
La Clique continues at Leicester Square Spiegeltent, London until 8 January 2022.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
There’s nothing like the whiff of warm mulled wine in the air to tell you that the festive season has truly arrived and with La Clique, making its return to the West End at the glitzy Spiegeltent, Underbelly has served up a bit of a Christmas cracker.
With such productions, presentation is everything and creative producer and director David Bates (musical direction by Dannie Bourne) and his team have nailed it with a fast moving, immaculately detailed and continually enthralling show that takes the circus genre, shakes it up and defies any audience not to take some pretty big intakes of breath. Plenty to admire and a fair few moments in the ‘look away now’ category, it’s hard not to be transfixed for most of the evening.
In truth, it’s not that there’s much here many audiences haven’t already seen, but that it’s done with such panache, bravado and indeed admirable attitude. These performers know just how good they are and they’re all clearly out to prove it.
The versatile talents of wonderfully over-the-top mistress of ceremonies Bernie Dieter are ideal to cajole the audience, tease them, entertain and jolly everything along. An impressive chanteuse, not everything she performed came off but when she reclined seductively to deliver ‘I Put a Spell On You’, it was hard not to be vocally smitten. It’s fabulous to see a production using a live band with the La Clique Palais Orkestra adding that extra level of enjoyment to the evening and featuring New York-based saxophonist Leo P, a veritable force of nature, a brilliant musician and wonderful entertainer.
As for the performers, La Clique offers a impressively balanced (sic) line-up of ludicrously talented, bizarre and baffling acts, from the superbly slick quick change artist and hand balancer Mirko Köckenberger through to London-based aerialists and France Has Got Talent finalists Hugo Desmarais and Katharine Arnold.
Then there’s hula hoopist extraordinare, Craig Reid. Possessing an infectious jollity and charming charisma, you can only smile widely as he turns into a human slinky before your very eyes. Enough to make your eyes water, even 10 rows back, Heather Holliday’s fire-breathing, sword-swallowing act is sensational, highly sensual and a wonderfully brazen homage to all those oral artists who have gone before her.
When it all threatens to get a little too intense, there’s Australian physical comedienne J’aiMime to provide some genuinely innovative touches of humour while roller-skating acrobatic duo Pierre and Steph, the third generation of the world renown The Skating Willers family, perform with such vigour that those in the front rows wisely started shuffling their seats back a few inches.
With such a spirited, talented ensemble of like-minded performers, it’s never really about any individual stealing the show, but the performance of Hackney born aerial artist LJ Marles straight after the interval is spellbinding and perhaps the stand-out moment. Strutting on stage, complete in thigh length stilletoed boots and little else and then performing twists, turns and gyrations that defy belief, never mind gravity, he looks every inch a star of the future.
If you’re looking for the ultimate in-tents Christmas experience, look no further. The mulled cider is pretty good too.
Derek Smith
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