Cirque De Sabotage
Bates and Emerson featuring Catriona ‘The Ringmaster’ Knox
Underbelly @ 12:15, Aug 2-26 (not 15), (1hr), £7.50 (£6.50), £8.50 (£7.50)
**
This was quite a draining experience to be honest. After watching this show I was left feeling weak, lifeless and yearning for a yard of Red Bull to reinvigorate the life that had been sucked from me during the previous hour.

The all female trio, comprising a double act and erm… a solo one, put in a reasonably good effort but so many elements failed to work that it became an endurance exercise very quickly. They seem to have gone for a circus theme, with colourful showy costumes and sequences of failing minimal extravaganza that link between sketches but it’s rather embarrassing to watch.

I guess its one of those things where you have to be really good at something in order to do it badly well. Therefore a rubbish act with a hula-hoop, is always going to be a rubbish act with a hula-hoop regardless of how you perform it. The one moment when the theme begins to work is in the final hectic sequence where they throw numerous fast-paced ideas for bizarre circus acts at the audience but by then it’s already way too late to rescue the show.

Several sketches had good ideas at the heart of them, these ideas alone being the elements that save this from drowning in one star misery, but they are often misplaced, dragged out or over-egged. Similarly, a couple of interactions with the audience had great potential but fell far short of what they could have achieved.

Bates and Emerson make a great double act, and prove their acting ability on a number of occasions during the show, offering wonderful subtlety. Although one of them (I’m not sure which) has a tendency to overplay things which only serves to weaken the efforts of the other. Catriona Knox stands out like a sore thumb as an unwelcome and unnecessary addition to a developing partnership and never seems to gel with the chemistry of the other two.

It’s very likely that this show is suffering from an early time slot, and may be better received by an audience that’s been warmed up a bit already. On the whole though, it’s a cringe-worthy affair that ruined me for some time.

by Ian Phillips

The National Student's
2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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