Edinburgh Fringe 2026
The Palestinian Circus: Step and a Half
The Palestinian Circus: Step and a Half
Genre: Circus
Venue: The Lafayette at Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
An engaging showcase of contemporary Palestinian circus, combining daring pole work, aerial skills, tumbling and traditional dance. In Step and a Half there is plenty of skill, warmth and ensemble spirit on display, with considerable potential to grow into something even more impactful.
Review
The Palestinian Circus: Step and a Half is playing at The Lafayette at Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows throughout the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2026.
We enter to a relatively bare stage, with just a handful of circus items dotted about the space. It’s a slow and gentle start, somewhat, with each performer taking to the stage in full house lights to wander about, soak up the atmosphere and wave to say hello. The troupe relaxedly take a few minutes to set up a giant pole centre stage. It must be 20 feet high and the tension builds as they carefully strap it into place and check, with some amusing help from an audience member, that it is in fact straight. There is a relaxed informality to this opening, although it does leave us wondering exactly when the performance itself is going to begin.
Eventually, the lights drop and it feels as though the show is properly underway. An audience that has been eager to clap and engage can breathe a little easier. We now know the show is on and can respond accordingly as the performers begin to demonstrate what they can do. We are treated to some solid circus work unfolding before us. The pole provides death-defying drops, garnering gasps from the crowd, while some of the strongest sections feature traditional dancing and impressive tumbling. The aerial work is also confidently performed. In a festival where contemporary circus is represented by some extraordinarily accomplished companies, Step and a Half perhaps doesn’t always reach the same technical heights as the very strongest acts on offer. However, there is plenty of skill on display and an appealing sense of ensemble, with the company clearly comfortable working together and supporting each other through the various disciplines.
If there were to be any development here, it might be to find ways of giving the individual circus sequences a greater sense of escalation. At times, the performance feels introspective and some sections arrive and pass without quite delivering the sense of spectacle you might expect within a venue as enormous as the Lafayette. Playing more consistently to all three sides could also help the production feel larger and more dynamic. None of this detracts from the evident skill of the performers, but a little more direction for some theatrical build around the individual feats could give them greater impact.
Make no mistake, there is still plenty to admire in Step and a Half and some impressive circus work on display. The Palestinian Circus School is part of a developing contemporary circus tradition in Palestine, and there is something particularly heart-warming about seeing that work presented on one of the world’s biggest arts stages.
