NoFit State Circus has its own big top. Currently, that big top has set down on the far reaches of the foreshore, so far east it’s nearly not East Perth anymore, as if it’s just flown in from space. Inside, at the very centre, is an arrangement of what looks like scaffolding, encased in a square of floor-to-ceiling sheets of mesh. It’s like a sleeping bird and the audience is encouraged to walk around it, presumably to pique their curiosity before the show begins. ‘This is a standing show’, the publicity warns. ‘Please wear comfortable shoes.’
NoFit State Circus has been around since 1986, when it was started by five friends in the UK. There are now sixteen touring artists in this company, on top of a legion of creative and production team members, crew and musicians. Bianco, the show they’ve brought to Perth for PIAF, is an extravagant undertaking, involving intensely complicated choreography, a set that moves among the audience, ushers with a level of civic responsibility akin to Batman, a full live house band, and lighting and sound that needs to be as flexible as the performers. Bianco is an impossible idea realised impossibly. ‘No way’, someone would have said upon its conception. ‘That can’t be done.’
The show begins with yelling. The performers swarm over the scaffolding, calling to each other, climbing around and limbering up. Suddenly, the sheets of mesh drop and the set unfolds into the audience. The performers are crew and performers all at once, rolling the set or belaying for those in the air when they themselves are not in the spotlight. As audience, we become an integrated part of the set, the spectacle unfolding above us and around us. It’s not a standing show so much as a moving show – each scene change comes with a shift in set, during which we are moved around too. It’s what being on a sped up Baz Luhrmann set might be like, with so much going on it’s difficult to know where to look next.
Though spectacular to the very furthest reaches of the term, Bianco is also spectacle for the sake of it. The performers are close to flawless, and each possess an intimate, if not impossible, relationship with gravity and physics. A juggler sits in a chair and speaks in almost bored French while manipulating an ever-climbing number of balls. A tight-rope walker balances in stilettos. Performers fly across the space, quite literally, in ways that make your stomach want to escape. This is studied circus, with an almost scientific relationship to aesthetics. But with this comes laziness towards structure. A narrative is attempted – I think – through broadcast narration, but the acoustics of the tent coupled with the volume of the band means it’s exceptionally difficult to hear. The scenes seem haphazardly arranged and interchangable, with no real justification for them being in that particular order. Bianco is essentially a series of spectacular vignettes with real no driving through-line, and without structure even the most intense spectacle can get repetitive after two hours.
The finale, based on simple beauty rather than extravagance, shows the restraint of great art. It has everyone leave with great big stupid smiles on their faces, talking all at once. Spectacle for the sake of it, certainly; but what spectacle!
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Bianco
NoFit State Circus
Director: Firenza Guidi
Creative Producer: Tom Rack
Composer & Musical Director: Gareth Jones
Design team: Tom Rack, Firenza Guidi, Saz Moir, Lyndall Merry
Costume Design: Rhiannon Matthews
Lighting Design: Adam Cobley
Set Construction: Tarn Aitken, Lolo Lavender
Performed by Marco Fiera, Lyndall Merry, Freya Watson, August Dakteris, Howie Morley, Sage Cushman, Anne-fay Johnston, Hugo Oliveira, Ariele Ebacher, Elena Burani, Lee Tinnion, Blaze Tarsha, Ellie Edwards, Kate Inez Kieran, Nat Whittingham, Fred Rendell
Band: Gareth Jones, Andy Moore, Ashley John Long, Callum McIntyre, Elena Burani, Sage Bachtler Cushman
NoFit State Big Top, Ozone Reserve
Perth International Arts Festival
11 February – 1 March
