From partnered lifts, throws, and tosses, from my vantage in the stalls, the Circa acrobats fly as if winged. The circus transposed to theatre setting scales even loftier heights from this perspective, looking upwards to the stage. Overhead, they truly tower, and as one acrobat stands upon the shoulders of another with familiar ease, for a moment I am convinced that this is not in fact how we should always move about when in pairs. But why leave it at two, when a third person can scale the formation and perch aloft. Why leave it at three, when a fourth person can scale the formation and make for an impossibly high human structure. As Rose Symons pauses, the fourth person in said stack, before making her feet-first plunge into the scene of Palace merriments, such building of spectacle not only amuses, but guides the story, in the first two acts (Act I: The Palace and Act Two: The Lake). From Maya Davies’s Black Swan aerial pole awe-inspiring vertiginous solo to four performers suspended from an aerial hoop, moving in perfect, balanced unison, as if taking turns to recline upon a full moon, so many circus feats astound for their mixture of grace and strength, poise and speed. Dare to dream, they coax. 

Libby McDonnell’s minimal and sparkled costume design affords the performers the freedom, security, and flexibility to balance and twist in their succession of aerial contortions and hand balances. The Prince is denoted by a golden crown, the Ugly Duckling by bloomers suggestive of down soon to give way to feather, and the Fairy Swan Mother, assumed by Asha Colless, sprouting wings of both black and white, unified by a red seam, and a sense of the ability to take you under her wing.