Waldo’s Circus of Magic & Terror – Bristol Old Vic and Touring

Abbie Purvis in Waldo’s Circus of Magic & Terror at the Bristol Old Vic and Touring. Picture: Paul Blakemore

Waldo’s Circus of Magic & Terror was reviewed at the Bristol Old Vic (playing until 1 April). The tour continues until 7 June 2023.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

The Romans believed that ‘bread and circuses’ were the secret to winning the approval of the people. In the main however, D/deaf and disabled professional theatre company Extraordinary Bodies has opted for the latter, with this extraordinary musical celebration of diversity and equality under stress, Waldo’s Circus of Magic & Terror, playing the Bristol Old Vic until 1 April ahead of a national tour.

The company, a collaboration between show-makers Cirque Bijou and charity Diverse City, aims to bring a completely new experience to musical theatre – and succeeds spectacularly. The setting is Nazi Germany in the early 1930s. Many are desperate to seek sanctuary from Hitler’s increasingly brutal dictatorship, but for Ringmaster Waldo and his travelling circus of outcasts and acrobats the show must go on.

Writers Hattie Naylor and Jamie Beddard have been particularly adept at using the initial courage and skills of the Extraordinary Bodies performers to communicate the battle by travelling circuses against the rampant fascism of the day, and the attack on people who didn’t conform to the Aryan concept.

The dexterity of the performers is impressive enough in itself, but where co-directors Claire Hodgson, Jenny Davies and Billy Alwen really triumph is in using the pounding music to inject drama into the little-known narrative. Charles Hazlewood’s score leans towards disco rock, especially in ensemble offerings such as ‘What a Show’, although one of the most effective numbers is ‘Disappeared’, conveyed entirely in British Sign Language by Raphaella Julien.

Award-winning disabled writer, actor and director Garry Robson anchors the show as braggart ringmaster Waldo. He may be arrogant, but he plays his part in using the circus as a potential escape route from the horrors of Nazi Germany. Abbie Purvis is both sassy and sympathetic as Krista, the star of the big top, who hopes to find safety from sterilisation and the extermination camps through the family protection of the circus.

Late-addition-to-the-cast Lawrence Swaddle is more of an innocent abroad as her admirer, acrobat Gerhard, whose membership of the Party is down to his gullibility, creating one of the many tensions dominating both plot and songs, while Tilly Lee-Kronick, as Waldo’s son Peter, has one of the more thoughtful numbers in ‘A Step for One’, as he joins the Brownshirts.

There are times when the stunning displays of circus skills do tend to hold up the previously little-known narrative, but in the round this is an ambitious stretching of theatrical boundaries by Extraordinary Bodies.

Alwen, who is the company’s artistic director, has said that if audiences are to reflect the diversity on stage, theatre buildings – especially access – will have to change. An important challenge for not just for the Bristol Old Vic, but also The Lowry in Salford Quays, co-producers Theatre Royal Plymouth, Mayflower Studios in Southampton, Lighthouse Poole and Brighton Dome, when Waldo’s Circus comes to town later this spring.

Jeremy Brien