Music / Festivals
Review: Carny Ville 2010
You have to expect the unexpected at Carny Ville, but what I was not expecting was shitting glitter for days afterwards. That’s what happens when you’re drinking scrumpy next to an erupting glitter gun and are having too much fun to sieve through the pint glass for its sparkly new contents.
A doubt still remains over whether this is the last time the sprawling former police, fire and court complex on Silver Street in Bristol city centre can play host to Carny Ville, its annual extravaganza of the spectacular and bizarre.
But if this is indeed its last hurrah, boy have they gone out with an almighty glitter gun-style bang.
is needed now More than ever
At Carny Ville, you leave your sanity at the door and expect the unexpected.
Hosted by The Invisible Circus, it is a dazzling array of street performance, art, circus skills, music and haunted house.
But that barely sums it up, because the joy of Carny Ville is wandering around the site and coming across gloriously unexpected delights, sometimes finding them by mistake.
There was Pip’s Jukebox, a man in a box playing requests on his guitar in a bluegrass style; the Micro-Arcade, a voice-controlled human arcade machine; and the Photo Booth, a Victorian parlour where this reviewer was served champagne cocktails by a waitress dressed as a lamp shade.
As usual, Carny Ville’s paying guests had made an almighty effort to match if not better the costumes of the performers. Human cats mixed with sailors as four tracksuited hoodlums were plucked from the theatre area by trolly dollies the Sleazy Jets and transformed into orange hot pant-clad gymnasts.
All around and above our heads in the central courtyard, performers juggled fire, walked on a tightrope licking with flames, danced synchronised routines dangling from wires (left) and hula-hooped to their hearts content in a magnificently choreographed routine.
It was difficult to know where to look, as Invisible Circus ring master Doug Fransisco roared his approval and the Carny Villains band struck up some rumbustious tunes.
Carny Ville is an extraordinarily diverse festival showcasing and celebrating all that Bristol’s creative scenes do best.
If they do need a new home after this year’s event, Bristol should bend over backwards to allow them to remain in our city. Let the glitz, the glamour and the glitter continue.
Carny Ville returns for one last time from October 7-10. Visit www.invisiblecircus.co.uk for more information.
Thanks to Spencer Dixey for the photographs.
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