Chinese State Circus / Circus Oz

Chinese State Circus: *****
Circus Oz: ***

An Eastern-themed spirit of festivity fills the air outside the Chinese State Circus as audience members wait to be ushered in. Lively kids practice their kung-fu moves, and the souvenirs on sale include neon-coloured light sabres. A spate of sophisticated and crowd-pleasing martial art films have been constantly arriving at our shores across the last decade, beginning with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and it seems these elegantly agile Eastern warriors have become the cowboys of the noughties.

This is most certainly played up in the 'Olympic Nation Tour' of the world renowned Chinese State Circus which, this year, is headlined by the iconic Shaolin warrior monks in their familiar orange garbs. Quite amazingly, their choreographed fights are just as fast, vicious and precise as they are in the movies, and by the time the interval break comes all children are armed, and their moves have become somewhat more complex.

Aside from the combat-inspired numbers, CSS boasts a visually stunning and technically outstanding line-up of acts, sequenced around a loose plot about China’s mighty history that inevitably features a cameo from a faux Olympic torch. I wouldn’t have been surprised if all the performers joined hands at the end and sang their national anthem in unison.

But whatever it is they want you to believe, you’ll be willing to swallow it once they've battered your senses. The performers excel in group stunts and coordinate difficult and original tricks with machine-like precision. The spotlight rarely falls on solo acts, and it’s from a permanently crowded ring that a grandeur of truly Olympic proportions emerges. Here are impossible contortions to make you squirm, and lightning-fast acrobatics that will jerk a sound out of you in spite of yourself. And guess what the warriors can do to bricks. Memorable highlights include an imperial plate-spinning set piece and an exquisite aerial silk number.

Circus Oz brings a very different kind of entertainment to the Fringe, from a small, more sober venue in Assembly Hall. Their show is a mischievous line-up of Blue Pete-style buffoonery, driven by a more traditional, anarchic kind of circus fun. Quite unlike the almost robotic performers of CSS, this considerably smaller team of artists are personalities who you’ll get to know, and at the end of the show a number of them make themselves available to pose with kids for photos.

Oz has the boisterous sense of humour of a drunk uncle, and always looks to combine their often impressive stunts with a laugh or two, meant both for children and adults. Technically, they are incomparable to the overwhelming brilliance of CSS, but make up for it with their affable, bohemian exuberance. The live band is a huge plus for Oz, injecting a certain warm intimacy into the outing that CSS misses out on with its banal, loudspeaker symphonies.

Adult tickets for the best seats at CSS are about twice the price of the single currency seats at Oz, but CSS also boasts a much greater runtime and offers generous concession prices that go easy on the tots. Both are fun excursions, but if you can only see one of them, be sure to make it the jaw-droppingly good spectacle that is the Chinese State Circus.