It will make the hairs on your neck prickle and cause you to cover your eyes in terror – all in the name of good, fearless fun. Will Ramsey hears about the Hull-bound Cirque Berserk.
HIS is the tale of countless newspaper headlines, and countless unheeded warnings from anxious parents.
"I am the man you read about – the one who ran away to join the circus," says Martin Burton.
The circus producer, who left home in the 1970s to become a "rather pretentious" mime artist, never left the sawdust behind.
More than 40 years on, he's among the country's biggest circus producers.
For his latest act, Martin's created a show with a more than a tang of adrenaline and petrol fumes. Cirque Berserk, which was first staged in London's Hyde Park, is out on its first national tour.
It's not a night for those who readily break sweat.
Alongside a 30-strong group of jugglers, acrobats, aerialists, dancers and musicians, is a revamped version of the wall of death.
The Globe Of Terror, renamed from the Globe Of Death, as punters thought the acronym GOD meant something holy – raises the hackles of most who watch.
Inside a 3.5m-wide steel mesh ball, three motorbike riders swoop about at speeds approaching 60mph.
"They miss each other by inches," Martin said.
"I've done most things in the circus over the years, but I wouldn't do it, it is just too dangerous.
"We've never had an accident, but I watch it and think 'No, not for me'."
The new take on circus includes a husband and wife knife-throwing team, with the husband hurling the blades "faster than anyone" Martin has seen – and wondering what would happen if they'd had a domestic.
Alongside the acts who operate high above the stage, including those on aerial silks, is a clown, Tweedy, who abandoned his ambitions to study animation in order to "become a cartoon".
Martin says the show was created to plug a gap that exists, and has always existed, among audiences.
"There is a group of adults, those aged between 18 to 24, which the circus has lost," he said.
"It is not something which has happened overnight. I still run traditional circuses, very successfully so, but the appeal for that is mums and dads and kids.
"This is for those who do not want to go out for the night with Mum and Dad."
The show follows the trend for circuses to return to theatre spaces, something which prompted Martin to get in touch with those in the West End.
Impresario Bill Kenwright was interested in working on the tour, until other commitments forced him to step back.
So Martin turned to others with experience in lighting and sound in West End productions to help out.
"When we first got together, it was a bit like a sixth-form dance, with West End people on one side of the room and the circus people on the other, eyeing each other suspiciously," Martin said.
"Circus people tend to be an earthy bunch and the West End people are not quite so earthy, but when it comes to sound and light they are the experts.
"They are marvellous, they really know their stuff."
Martin has prior experience of the theatre – during the late 1970s and 1980s, he worked at Hull Truck's Spring Street theatre.
Back then, he was the "pretentious mimer", who shared an agent with pop star Adam Ant.
Together with a group of clowns and acrobats, he staged children's shows at the theatre, while living in a chromium gypsy caravan close to the Humber Bridge.
"The whole Spring Street experience propelled us forward as a circus," Martin said. "Watching how they worked at Hull Truck encouraged us to think seriously. We were kids mucking about, but it made us realise that this is a proper job."
It was a "proper job" that he had promised to his mum that he would turn to after three years in the circus.
Forty years on, the circus has proved as such – just not in the way that Martin, or his mum, might have expected.
When and where Thursday, January 22, to Saturday, January 24. Thursday, 7.30pm; Friday, 5pm and 7.45pm; Saturday, 3pm and 7.30pm at Hull New Theatre, Kingston Square, Hull.Tickets: £16 to £22.
To book: 01482 300300.
Visit: hullcc.gov.uk and www.cirqueberserk.co.uk
