The Chinese State Circus
Live at Venue Cymru, Llandudno

DON'T try this at home is one of those annoying phrases often bandied around in the day and age of "no win no fee" court cases but one rarely merited.
But one trip to the Chinese State Circus proves that it is sometimes a statement well-founded - especially when we talking of bricks being broken with a mallet on top of someone's head.
Featuring the martial arts warriors from the Shaolin Temple, artistes from the Peking Opera and acrobatic stars the show is jam-packed with enough variety of death defying performances to keep even the most fidgety kid occupied.
A narrator - who to be honest is a little scary - guides the audience through the various stunts to explain how they developed from centuries ago into the polished techniques we see in front of us today.
Then we're left to gawp at the spectacle in front of us as a seemingly "normal" looking woman contorts her body into the most painful looking positions.
Next up comes a hula hooping genius and, despite losing one, once, she's soon spinning about 25 of the things around her body resembling a kind of slinky spring.
After more acrobatics comes the infamous martial arts display from the Shaolin school of Kung Fu, Wu Shu and Qigong.
I have to say I was a tad disappointed by them. They were certainly skilled but maybe they'd been over-hyped a little too much previously so by the time they started to break lead rods on their heads I think the whole audience was thinking, maybe a little unfairly, "about time"!
By far the stars of the evening were the acrobats who used silk scarfs to do some spectacular stunts whilst in the air. The couple didn't slip up once and when the woman started spinning around in the air, suspended by a tiny silk scarf which she was holding in her teeth I, along with the whole of the theatre, was in awe.
The ending was a little too cheesey and Americanised - when the stunts themselves would have spoken for themselves perfectly well without all the schmaltz - and the music stopped abruptly and changed with no kind of continuity, but despite this there's no denying that everyone in Venue Cymru was impressed and certainly, entertained.

7/10