London Wonderground on the capital city’s South Bank is a whole mix of summer fun. With the long-awaited summer beginning to show its face, this fairground of London entertainment is a must-see and a must-do. With a huge programme of comedy, cabaret, dance, theatre and circus, the Udderbelly Festival is hugely popular and adorned with revellers rain or shine.
Part of the eclectic line up are the performances of Barbu, running in the London Wonderground Speigeltent. The Canadian circus company – going by the name of Cirque Alfonse – had its European premiere at the Edinburgh Festival earlier this year and another run at Underbelly’s new Circus Hub venue this summer, the first major venue dedicated solely to circus at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
The Spiegeltent is renowned for its programming of breath-taking performances and off-the-wall entertainment; the heart thumping score by the frenetic electro-trad band leads the way for Barbu, highlighting the company’s work and carrying the show through. With lots of similar performances on offer each year in the capital, London Wonderground is not a place to pass by. The Barbu show looks back to the origins of the circus in Montreal at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, with elements of the fairground, simple curiosities and unexpected eccentricities. Barbu therefore takes the bare bones of circus and turns them upside down in this hair-raising spectacle.
Cirque Alfonse has been exploring traditional and iconic Quebec images and integrating them into contemporary acrobatics. In the Lanaudière region of Quebec, the Carabinier-Lépine family and close friends joined forces in 2005, creating La Brunante which became the foundation for the show Timber! which premiered in 2010. Dubbed as London’s finest circus party, Cirque Alfonse clan’s third show Barbu is an bizarre and once-in-a-lifetime extravaganza.