ON STAGE | RETURN OF THE GODZ REVIEW: A WILD BLEND OF MYTHOLOGY, CIRCUS AND COMEDY

I came for the Greek gods and grav­ity-defy­ing acro­bat­ics. I left feel­ing inspired to renew my gym mem­ber­ship, attempt the impossible, and read the show’s con­tent warn­ings much more care­fully in future.

Return of the GODZ takes inspir­a­tion from Greek myth­o­logy and turns it into a chaot­ic mix of cir­cus, com­edy and abso­lute mad­ness. The five god: Her­cules, Apollo, Her­mes, Cupid and Dionysus are played by Cal­lan Har­ris, Thomas Gorham, Mat Piva, Liam Dum­mer and AJ Saltala­mac­chia, who spend the next hour and a half prov­ing that the laws of phys­ics appar­ently don’t apply to them.

Act One is where the show is at its strongest.
From the moment the cast step onto the stage, the energy is infec­tious. One per­former bal­ances on a free-stand­ing lad­der, anoth­er builds an increas­ingly ter­ri­fy­ing tower of chairs before cas­u­ally per­form­ing head­stands on top of it.

There are fire tricks, dis­plays of strength that make your aver­age gym ses­sion look embar­rass­ing and levels of flex­ib­il­ity that had me ques­tion­ing wheth­er my daily hot yoga prac­tice has been a com­plete waste of time.

What makes it even more impress­ive is how effort­less they make everything look. The audi­ence reg­u­larly found them­selves hold­ing their breath before break­ing into applause, while the per­formers some­how looked com­pletely relaxed throughout.
The cast also have fant­ast­ic chem­istry with one anoth­er. They play off each oth­er bril­liantly, con­stantly find­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for humour and inter­act­ing with audi­ence mem­bers in the front rows. There wasn’t a moment where they weren’t try­ing to get a laugh, and judging by the reac­tions around me, it worked.

That said, as someone see­ing the troupe for the first time, I occa­sion­ally found myself want­ing more acro­bat­ics and slightly less build-up between them. One sequence centres around what appears to be a per­former using a whip to extin­guish candles, only for the audi­ence to dis­cov­er the candles aren’t real. It got plenty of laughs, but it was a little underwhelming.
The per­formers are so skilled that I often found myself want­ing the next stunt rather more woven into the story rather than anoth­er joke or body caress­ing. That’s not a cri­ti­cism of the humour; the audi­ence clearly loved it so down to your per­son­al taste and humour!

Then came Act Two…
And hon­estly, noth­ing… could have pre­pared me for Act Two.
The story fol­lows Her­cules’ jour­ney to the under­world, but the plot often takes a back­seat to the com­edy. At one point, sev­er­al of the gods appear dressed as nuns dan­cing to Rihanna’s S&M. If that sen­tence alone makes you want to buy a tick­et, you’ll prob­ably have a fant­ast­ic time.
A quick dis­claim­er for any­one con­sid­er­ing going: there is nudity.
Not “you might miss it if you blink” nud­ity. Actu­al nudity.

While the myth­o­logy provides the frame­work for the story, I found myself wish­ing the Her­cules storyline had been explored a little more. At times it felt slightly chopped up, jump­ing from one scene to anoth­er before ideas had fully developed. The show seems much more inter­ested in mak­ing you laugh than telling a cohes­ive myth­o­lo­gic­al story, which is abso­lutely fine if that’s what you’re there for.

To be fair, most people around me seemed more than happy to go along for the ride. The audi­ence were laugh­ing uncon­trol­lably and clearly hav­ing the time of their lives. At some point I stopped try­ing to under­stand what was hap­pen­ing and simply accep­ted the show.

One thing that nev­er changes, how­ever, is the per­formers’ stage pres­ence. Wheth­er they were bal­an­cing metres above the stage, play­ing with fire or launch­ing them­selves into anoth­er ridicu­lous scen­ario, they com­pletely owned the room from start to finish.

If you’re look­ing for an accur­ate retell­ing of Greek myth­o­logy, this isn’t it. If you’re look­ing for a night of laughter, out­rageous com­edy, impress­ive cir­cus skills and five per­formers who seem determ­ined to ignore every known safety reg­u­la­tion, you’ll prob­ably have a bril­liant time.

I may not have learned much about Ancient Greece. But I did leave with a renewed appre­ci­ation for acrobats, a sud­den desire to become more flex­ible, and sev­er­al ques­tions that I’m not entirely sure I want answered.

Head First Acrobats — Return of The GODZ is show­ing at Pea­cock Theatre from 17^th- 20^th June 

Tick­ets HERE 

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Salina Zaher

Salina is a mul­ti­cul­tur­al presenter focus­ing on stor­ies shaped by iden­tity, cul­ture, and lived experience.

Latest posts by Salina Zaher (see all)

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