Il Florilegio is a relic - a silly, vulgar, cruel, thrilling, beautiful relic. The death of this sort of circus is appropriate and probably inevitable, but last night's audience seemed happy to be around to celebrate one hell of a wake.
From the time the strong man, Il Principe, appeared, like Anthony Quinn in Fellini's La Strada but even more decrepit, "breaking" a chain with his chest, we were away.
When a white horse followed him, dancing and rolling and chasing a flock of geese around the ring, we knew the destination was other-worldly
Of course the circus is no place for elephants, a hippo, a rhino, and these animals were the most disturbing. One elephant kept eating sawdust; the hippo act was just stupid anthropomorphising, complete with rude sound effects; the rhino ran 'round a bit.
As for the humans, Dublin has seen better acrobats, but the Italians' showmanship is the equal of anyone. Flying around went a muscleman in gold-sequined briefs followed by a woman in a leotard and cat mask. Kitschy? Aye. Erotic? I'm tellin' ya.
The circus was packed, of course, with phoney, breathtaking thrills and spills, but near the end one of them was dangerously close to the real thing: a trapeze artist's "fall" was only part-broken by the net and he hit his head on a railing - the same railing that a moment earlier my seven-year-old daughter Louie had been leaning across. Clearly hurt, he went on with the show and reassured concerned audience members about his "iron head"
The show's comic highlight was a moment of audience participation, when four random dads were made to lie awkwardly across each other's laps - talk about embarrassment - and found themselves transformed into a human table. "This circus," said Louie, "is definitely cruel to people."
The Il Florilegio circus runs in Booterstown, Co. Dublin until February 20th. It then tours to Limerick from February 23rd to March 5th, to Cork from March 7th-26th, to Galway from March 28th to April 9th, to Waterford from April 12th-18th and from Wexford from April 21st to May 1st. For information and to book phone 1890 923188