Caged | The Edith Spiegeltent | Until 25 Jan | ★ ★ ★ ★
The performers at the German Kabarett bring all the gender-bending excitement of 1920s Berlin to the small stage in the middle of the large Fringe World circus tent. They are introduced by award winning burlesque star Sugar Du Joure whose costume is one half male ringmaster and the other half a voluptuous female.
The show is restricted to those over 18 years of age as the eight burlesque performers play with their genders and each other. Lip-syncing to raunchy songs and dancing provocatively warms up the audience to some naughty antics and impressive athletic feats.
Costumes are stripped away and the tease continues as individuals and couples embark on some spectacular aerial acrobatics on a swing, a net, ropes and each other. There is no doubting the breath-taking skill of the performers who never miss adding sexual suggestions.
Caged is pure entertainment with copious amounts of humour mixed in with the seductive aerial acrobats and contortionists. I was waiting for the cage to appear, but it didn’t and it was only later that I read in the program that the title derives from “get wild and let loose from what cages you.
The performers are part of Kinetica which is a Western Australian contemporary circus company that has performed at Fringe World before – Dark Matter in 2016, Interplay in 2017 and Syncope that was performed at St George’s Cathedral in 2018 and 2019.
A bit of advice is that The Edith Spiegeltent holds 400 people and if you’re not one of the first in the queue to race in and get a seat in the first couple of rows near the stage, then your view is likely to be compromised. I found myself behind a pole, unable to see what was happening on the ground and distracted by the surprising number of people who walked past on their way to and from the bar during the show.
Caged runs until 25 January at The Edith Spiegeltent which is in Yagan Square, Northbridge.
Lezly Herbert has jumped from dance (ran a ballet school) to drama (was Camille in Lady of the Camellias at uni) to film (tutoring at Murdoch Uni) to teaching to philosophising (has a Masters in Philosophy from UWA). She has been reviewing films, books, dance and theatre since the dark ages (1996).
