Paranormal Cirque II – Cirque meets Haunt and Wins!!

Synopsis

I will start this out right away by saying I do not like circuses. I don’t know whether it is their sordid history of violence and mistreatment towards animals or just the fake cheer of it all, but I do not find them appealing one bit. So in the last few years, when I have seen the tents for the paranormal circuses or whatever the other creepy circuses were called, I have always just ignored them. I figured that I would like them as little as I liked the regular kind, and no one said anything to the contrary.

This year seemed to be the same. But then I looked at my Facebook feed. This feed is filled with goths and performers of all kinds, as well as family and a few other normies that have deemed me fit to communicate with. But here is the fun part, My Readers. My goth friends were all going to the Paranormal Cirque 2…..and having a blast!! And the pics they were posting were awesome! So I decided that maybe I could have been wrong, cause that happens now and again. So I told the Dragon….let’s give it a try.

We walked into the concession-type area, and it instantly reminded me of the beginning of a haunted attraction. So to say, I felt right at home. There were graveyards with skeletons and a doll put together in a creepy way. And as I looked closer at the headstones, I saw a familiar name or two…

We bought snacks and took our seats. The lights were low but we could tell that it was not a normal three-ring circus. For one thing, there were no rings, but there was a vampire castle…
And then it began…and My Readers, it was so much fun! It had vampire clowns and dancing zombies and contortionist rag dolls and sooo much more!

The Good

First of all, the atmosphere was so much fun. It was like someone took a haunted attraction and a cirque show and put them together. Instead of just dancing acrobats, they did flips and tricks while jumping rope with an intestine they pulled out of a corpse! Instead of normal clowns, they were ghost hunters that happened to stumble on a vampire mansion, and they were hilarious! I am pretty sure that most of their lines were impromptu, and while they were a bit out there at times, mostly they were hilarious.

While the other acts were good as well, tightrope tricks and a big spinning wheel and a sword swallower….you get the idea, I think the quality that made it the most fun for me was how engaged the performers were. Some of them made mistakes, one tightrope walker almost fell onto the mats, but they made a joke of it and then just kept right on going. They had chemistry and joy, and that joy was contagious! It made the audience laugh and cheer right along with them.

The Bad

I can’t really call this category “The Bad” like I normally do, because I am not sure this statement really counts as bad. The show was carried by the atmosphere. Some tricks were stunning, some were just ok, a couple were things even my uncoordinated self could have done. The performances weren’t always perfect. And if you strip away the castle and the makeup and the smoke and the music, they were just a normal, maybe even small kind of circus.

But the atmosphere did carry it all! The music was fun, everything from heavy metal backgrounds to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The sets were gothic and the makeup was haunt quality, well painted and all things the performers could move in. They sold versions of their masks in the lobby, and while they were not specially made or anything (the company was on the tags) they were fun. I would not be surprised if they pop up at the next masquerade night at the club. The lights were dim enough to add spookiness but bright enough to see the performers.

I can’t really take the show apart and say that without the atmosphere it would have been bad, because it wasn’t without the atmosphere. And it was not bad at all!

Overall

Paranormal Cirque 2 was a fun night out. We laughed, we gasped, and we cheered. The performers in the enormous steampunk wheel made me want to come up and play too. I won’t give away every single act, because that might take away the point of seeing it, but it was a couple of hours long and worth every second.

Here is their curtain call, giant spinny wheel, vampire castle, and all!