Showing posts with label Circa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Circa. Show all posts

Monday, 16 July 2012

"How like an angel"


These celebrated words of Hamlet about man's nature go with either the preceding phrase - "In action..." - or that following - "...in apprehension" - according to whether you prefer the First Folio or the Second Quarto. At one point tonight, in Gloucester Cathedral, they fitted the latter to perfection.

We were at a performance by the Australian acrobatic ensemble Circa alongside I Fagiolini, the specialist vocal ensemble which emerged a quarter of a century or so ago out of Oxford. "How like an angel", a production shared by Norfolk & Norwich Festival between Norwich and three other English cathedrals, attempts (not always very successfully, IMHO) to fit music of the 12th, 16th/17th and 20th/21st Centuries with mind-blowing acrobatics, principally on stages at either end of the nave. However, at the mid-point of the hour-long performance, one of the five acrobats stands "apprehensively" in the spotlit clerestory before allowing himself to tumble freely down to the floor: there thankfully his fall is broken by some sort of bed that's been wheeled onto precisely the right spot. Never have I heard such a sharp collective intake of breath!