Landscape with Monsters - Circa and Merrigong Theatre Company

Overview

The best kinds of performances, including in the art form that is circus, make one thing happen. While you're watching wondrous feats occur before your very eyes, you completely forget the most important question: how did they do that?

That's what comes with truly being immersed in the spectacle in front of you — and it is something Circa has been trying to achieve since 2004. Of course, only you can judge whether their latest effort, a collaboration with Merrigong Theatre Company called Landscape with Monsters, achieves that aim for you. However, you know it is going to do its very best to try.

That starts with the concept behind director Yaron Lifschitz's physical show, which tells of a world in which post-industrial cities are in decay. Sans all of the usual apparatus usually associated with circus, the Circa crew create the magic of movement using little more than wooden boxes, a hard floor and tall metal structures — and, all set to a soundtrack that blends pop and electronic music.