Theatre review: Cirque Alfonse’s Barbu makes rowdy, undie-clad circus up-close-and-personal at The Cultch
Audience goes wild for an often surreal and literally cheeky performance of sideshow antics and gravity-defying stunts
Cirque Alfonse’s Barbu. Photo by Frédéric Barrette
The Cultch presents Barbu at the Historic Theatre to June 23
CIRQUE ALFONSE’S BARBU was the sort of show where, when you arrived in The Cultch Historic Theatre, you said “Oh dear God, I’m sitting in the front row,” and by the end were saying “Thank the dear Lord above I was sitting in the front row!” Beer spray, cream-pie splatter, German-tourist-issue skivvies, and all.
Yes there were some tense moments as the splendiferously bearded, scantily-clad troupe flew in the air around you, landing on mattresses with a “whump!” mere inches from your ringside perch. A guy seated on one of three sides of the stage did look a tad nervous when a corseted performer started cracking a whip beside him. But Cirque Alfonse is a company that wants you to see it sweat. Raw and decidedly unpretentious, it’s not afraid of making mistakes (albeit these self-effacing performers have serious chops, trained in some of the world’s biggest circus companies). Hilariously, performer and cofounder Antoine Carabinier-Lépine would growl a caveman “aaaaargh!” and try again when he’d drop a juggling baton or misland a teeterboard leap, the audience maniacally cheering him on.
Adding to the party atmosphere was a raucous three-piece band, complete with ringmaster DJ, electric guitars, and drums.
Unlike the sequinned, big-tent nouveau circus you’re used to, you watch these performers drip perspiration, struggle to catch their breath, and shake under the weight of a tower of bodies—and the visible effort makes the stunts all the more impressive.
The vibe is part David Lynch film, part Depression-era travelling carnival, and part rural-Quebec house party when the hash shipment arrives. Surreal moments include a Zoltar-lookalike magician-mesmerizer, hitting seven feet tall in platform heels, and the fierce Laura Lippert twirling high in the air from her braided bun. Later on, the spinning human punching bag simply has to be seen to be processed.
Some moments recalled the real turn-of-the-last-century Montreal circuses that Cirque Alfonse researched, complete with a classic woman-in-a-box trick, a bed of nails, superhuman hand-to-hand balancing, and a strongman hoisting a full beer keg in an airborne ballet.
But most of the time, Barbu felt like a bunch of overgrown—albeit magnificently hirsute, tattooed, and musclebound—kids playing around, sabotaging each other’s balancing acts, hanging moons, flashing the odd full Monty, yanking each other’s beards, and trying to crack each other up. At times they cavorted through the audience in their black undies—even stopping to guzzle the dregs of a patron’s bar drink.
To say much more would ruin the nonstop blur of surprises. This insanely intimate circus, risky and at times quite literally cheeky, left the crowd standing and screaming for more on opening night.
So—if we haven’t made this clear enough yet—get tickets before they sell out. And get as close to the high-flying, old-school-sideshow chaos as you possibly can. 
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