Jim Rose Circus

In a post-2girls1cup world (I advise you not to use a public computer to Google that one), it is increasingly difficult to shock. Generation @ are notoriously hard to appall and the incessant blurring of the line between life on-screen and reality mean that the list of what hasn’t been seen or done before grows ever shorter.

Ten years have passed since Jim Rose last graced the Fringe with his displays of freakish nastiness. As the disturbingly dapper ring-master—for your own sanity, please try not to see the pun—informs us, he lorded over one of the Fringe’s most successful productions for the best part of the Clinton decade.

In 2008, Jim returns to haunt us with images of live, onstage circumcisions, audience involvement in acts of sexual depravity and rock stars fucking horses…or so the rumours go. In reality, Jim’s offerings are far from this extreme. In a weird mix of WWF melodrama and the uncomfortably well-developed predilection of the female cast members for high degrees of self-humiliation, the terribly British audience seem drowned in the wake of an unstoppable show.

Watching a woman extract two small items of clothing from her vagina is certainly an unusual sight for most. But in the internet age it ceases to be something that riles us and becomes merely an elephant-in-the-room from which we would prefer to avert our gaze. The giant Purple Cow has the air of a Christmas dinner table where a slightly demented Granny has just revealed a close-guarded family secret. Throats are cleared, eyes wonder and feet twitch.

The show’s initial impact piece, a truly brilliant trick where Rose strings four razor blades along a thread of cotton entirely within his gullet, suggests that the show will continue in this awe-inspiring vein. But what follows is far less impressive. Sure, you don’t see a woman masturbating or a girl firing blue paint out of her arse everyday, but are these skills?

The thin story line that allows such bizarre goings-on to hang together sees 80s rock tribute band, Warthög go through seemingly impossible feats of self-mutilation in the hope of earning a passage to Hell. But with some truly gruesome behaviour covering the small screens of every home in the country, is this anything new? The likes of Jackass and Dirty Sanchez make Jim Rose Circus seem not only dated but positively comedic. Indeed, the range of emotions evoked by a scene such as The Last King of Scotland’s ill-fated Dr Garrigan hanging from a meat hook in a Ugandan airport highlight the vacuity of the Circus's amateurish shock-tactics.

If anything, the way this show consummately fails to excite perhaps says more about the psyches of today’s audiences than the limitations of Mr. Rose’s talents. And indeed, the volume of words that have been required to explain “what happened that night” would suggest that it certainly stands out from the crowd.

It would be churlish to say that this show was enjoyed by no one – the gentleman in front of me screaming along to the Black Sabbath tributes will certainly disagree with this review. It would be equally unfair to say that Jim’s antics completely failed to alarm – several ladies left a few shades whiter in the face than when they had walked in. But an overriding feeling of sadness and regret that days gone by can never be resurrected pervaded the Udderbelly Pasture that night. Nostalgia can be a double-edged sword.

“Time has mellowed Jim,” reads Rose’s sarcastic press release. Perhaps not, but time has certainly made Jim seem more mellow.