The thing with theatre is you have to make up your mind to go and not pre­var­ic­ate, sea­sons are short and good shows sell out.  Down­stage has been hit­ting the sweet spot recently with sell-out shows like Guru of Chai and the Sound­stage series that looks to become an insti­tu­tion.  If you are shy of theatre and not really sure what you would like you should con­sider book­ing tick­ets for Deadly now because you wont be dis­ap­poin­ted and the sea­son ends 23 Octo­ber.

Deadly’s tagline is ‘cir­cus with bite!’ and the per­form­ance explores the arch of a rela­tion­ship using the 7 deadly sins as a device to draw us into the dark sides of a pas­sion­ate coup­ling.  It opens with a couple devour­ing each oth­er, lit­er­ally bit­ing into each oth­er, they start out sen­su­al and become increas­ingly aggress­ive and demand­ing.  The audi­ence is nod­ding to them­selves, think­ing, “Ah, glut­tony – ticked that one off. Now, what were the oth­er deadly sins again?”

For­tu­nately this is not a lit­er­al romp through the sins and you soon find your­self caught up in the sheer beauty and phys­ic­al­ity of these body artists, not caring if it is pride or wrath when the man writhes up the pole raging and thrash­ing, curs­ing fate before slid­ing head first down the pole stop­ping cen­ti­metres before the ground.   There are no har­nesses and no safety nets, plenty of the audi­ence  were left white-knuckled watch­ing the couple on the swing sus­pen­ded over the stage per­form­ing the private uni­verse of love with all of its suf­foc­at­ing and some­times sloth­ful intens­ity.  If all this sound a bit, well, intense, nev­er fear – there is a lot of joy and a few laughs to be had.  The sulk per­formed as a yogic head­stand pro­duced a few stifled giggles of recog­ni­tion from the audi­ence and a blissed-out sol­it­ary swing while the sky rained gold flecks brought the audi­ence to ohs and ahs and a rolling swell of applause.    The music is also pretty diverse with some raging out to met­al and some swinging to Nina Simone.

If you have dif­fi­culty pic­tur­ing cir­cus as any­thing more than glor­i­fied gym­nastics open your mind because the form is evolving and Wel­ling­ton has a thriv­ing cir­cus com­munity.  Down­stage has help­fully put togeth­er a video pre­view for you to get a taste.