The Dublin Fringe Festival launched itself in typically raucous fashion on Saturday night, with a number of shows that veered between the bold and the beautiful, the ethereal and the erotic, the hilarious and the horrifying.
The Spiegeltent has taken up its regular annual residence at George's Dock in the middle of the IFSC, which was the centre of operations for the Fringe's debut night, and will be home to La Clique for almost every night of the festival's 16-day life.
The show is a wild, exhilarating mix of circus performance, music, contortion and burlesque that leaves the audience aching from laughter and speechless with delight. Camille O'Sullivan is in fine, sultry form. Norwegian contortionist Captain Frodo has the audience gasping and grinning in equal measure. The English Gentlemen perform an athletic routine that begins with all the dignity of afternoon tea, and ends in a ridiculous celebration of the British Empire in all its suspender-wearing, Union Jack-toting glory.
Amy Jean's tribute to the American dream leaves little to the imagination, Tumble Circus's rope routine is a scream, and Dave O'Mer's swinging act leave the front rows soaked and the female contingent breathless. Miss Behave misused and abused first the audience and then her own facial features.
A group of utterly seductive performances that were a perfect blend of athletic prowess and hilarious showmanship: they made it difficult not to run off and join this sexiest of circuses.
By contrast, the Fringe's opening act, a performance piece by celebrated Russian group Derevo, was a gradual, challenging and introspective piece, created for a one-off performance on the sheltered waters of George's Dock.
A thick crowd gathered around the quay to see several milk-white trees and a group of metal beds floating eerily in the water to the sound of gentle snoring. As the slumber gave way to sonorous, melancholy music, figures daubed in white rose and wrestled themselves from their tethered beds, flexing and pushing into the water.
Visually, this was an outstanding piece, haunting and disturbing and demanded extraordinary control and commitment from the actors, as well as an exceptional confidence in performance. That said, it was difficult and mysterious and although no single narrative was clear, the overall impression was haunting, elegiac and effective.
Back in the Spiegeltent, Red, Hot and Brass played a scintillating musical set that had the room swaying, clapping and dancing to a heady cocktail of the brass and the Balkan, the jazz and the joyous. Dublin can look forward to another two weeks of having the city overrun by the special and the spectacular as the Fringe lets its lunatics loose. You have been warned.
• La Clique runs until Sept 23.