Circus Mondao is a comedy name in itself, and we knew things would be bad when we saw the name of the venue (Cookies Car Boot Field) on the advertising lorries. Handpainted, they really did claim to have good 'press revues'. However on the basis that a) it looks so bad that it must be funny and b) a huge discount was wangled with ease (being ripped off became less of a concern) we took the kids anyway.
The big top was tiny, and the ringside seats we had bartered for were - I kid you not - plastic garden chairs. Some people would have paid £16 for the privilege of sitting in them rather than on some rickety looking wooden 'stalls'. Suckers.The artists as it turned out were the same (badly) facepainted people who tried to sell us hamburgers, candy floss and 'circus novelties' incessently before the show began.
Most of the show was dedicated to horses and the sort of thing you might see if you went to watch a horse being trained. It did have the advantage of music, but it was badly DJ-ed and skipped from one track to another sporadically. The amazing 'counting horse' could have been a highlight, but scraped the ground 8 times when asked 'how many days there were in a week'. Having worked to prevent the poor horse scraping at the ground further the trainer passed this off with "of course we all wish there were 8 days in a week, don't we".
The pygmy goats were a comic addition who didn't really impress as they were dragged around the makeshift obstacle course, and during the interval it became apparent that no-one had paid the extortionate fee for a photograph with Shrek (and his sausage dog mutant horse) for a while. We watched as the polaroid camera was dusted off and an out of focus print was handed to the mother who had paid for her child's photograph. She didn't look impressed...
There were one or two 'good' acts, including the man balancing on a ladder, and the couple who did bicycle tricks. Even the woman with the hoops was reasonable until she dropped some of them. Personally I was gutted that there was not tightrope and no trapeze.
To be fair, the kids had a good time (on the whole) and it was a lot of fun, if not for the right reasons. And we didn't expect any more...
