Brighton Year-Round 2025
Blizzard
FLIP Fabrique
Genre: Acrobatics, Aerial Theatre, Circus
Venue: Brighton Dome
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
FLIP Fabrique cool our over-heating planet with the snowy Canadian setting of their action packed circus.
A treat at any time of the year, it’s a crisp and sparkling bauble of a show for December.
Runs at Brighton Dome Concert Hall until Wed 31 December.
Review
French Canadian circus company Flip Fabrique are best known to British audiences through their many appearances at Edinburgh Festival, beginning in 2016 with Attrape-Moi, set in the last days of Summer. Much of their work since then has had a more frosty outlook, and Blizzard, first performed in 2019, comes misted with icy crystals and layered in woollies.
Blue light cuts through white haze, like the trailer for a Netflix crime series, as thermally-clad musician Christophe Magnan-Bossé is wheeled into position, playing upright piano with a built in mixing desk, lights flashing. The opening song is MOR rock tinged with heavy bass that seems de-rigour for French circus, and lyrics about being obliterated in a white-out (apply your own interpretation). Later Ben Nesrallah’s music becomes more fittingly abstract and subtle, with unearthly rumblings underscoring artistic director Bruno Gagnon’s wintery vision.
A circus audience primarily wants spectacle; bodies doing seemingly impossible feats, preferably at fear-inducing heights. The cast of six deliver this and more, with several impeccably timed set-pieces of tumbling, aerial dance, fabulous trampolining and juggling, all beautifully choreographed by director Olivier Normand. Dominated by a huge multi-purpose metal cube and the roving piano, the stage becomes a playground, extending into the audience for a run-round with a leaf blower. ‘Snow’balls bounce inside the cube flashing beams of light; acrobat Elizabeth Steele is launched untethered into space from a Korean cradle – with the catcher, Samuel Ramos – held by a frame. There’s a suggestion of moonscapes alongside evocations of the Canadian snowscape; figures in white, defying gravity (a bouncy floor is cleverly used); and the atmospheric chill of Caroline Ross’s impeccable lighting design.
Clowning episodes backed with information bulletins from the ‘Ministry of Cold, Chilly and Brrr’, about how to live in this environment, are hit and miss; a diversion to summertime with hula hooping seems out of place, and ice-skating tokenistic, but a ‘schools out’ sequence of playtime games is joyful.
As with all ‘big top’ variety, Blizzard is episodic in form and after some spectacular feats (that trampolining!) it ends with a riveting moment of quietly dramatic physicality. A treat at any time of the year, it’s a crisp and sparkling bauble of a show for December.
