★★★☆☆
Shaun the Sheep’s Circus Show – bonkers or brilliant? Or both? Award-winning Australian circus group Circa has partnered with Aardman to bring the world’s favourite plasticine sheep to Manchester’s Aviva Studios.
Artistic Director of Circa, Yaron Lifschitz, created and directed Shaun the Sheep’s Circus Show in Brisbane, Australia, in 2021. Since then, the production has toured across Australia, Singapore, and now Europe. Featuring the iconic music of Shaun the Sheep, Jethro Woodward’s score elevates the onstage antics, underscoring the flock’s chaos with the familiar warmth of the Aardman classic.
Disaster strikes: the Farmer’s brand-new TV isn’t working. As orthodox big red theatre curtains – ironic within the ultra-modern Aviva Studios – open, they reveal a vast grassy hill towering over the audience, with a little house perched on top, designed by Dan Portra. The Farmer (Tristan St John/Jordan Twartz) begrudgingly rigs his TV to a satellite dish suspended in the air with a comically long yellow wire, turning it on.
The sheep flock is introduced as the acrobats enter dressed in grey overall costumes, woolly aprons, and black headpieces topped with the Aardman-style clay-like googly eyes. These costumes, designed by Libby McDonnell, are interchangeable for different characters – for the pigs, the sheep vests are swapped for pink plush tops. Shaun is distinguished by the tuft of wool on his head, and Timmy’s mum by her pink hair rollers, though these markers occasionally get lost in the flock.
It’s not long before Timmy (Sophie Seccombe) charges on with a pair of shears and promptly snips the wire, forcing Shaun (Adam Strom) and the flock to connect their own DIY film camera and create a circus show to play on the TV. What follows is a series of episodic sketches, before the flock scramble to distract the Farmer with a more traditional circus – complete with glow-in-the-dark bowling-pin juggling and aerial silks.
Ironically, while the farmer’s fictional TV remains broken onstage, the large screen wheeled into centre stage also falters, flashing black squares in the lower right corner and failing to function during a scene towards the end. Initially, the screen appears as a rusted road sign reading “Mossy Bottom Farm”, before going on to display montage-style clips from the original television programme, sketch titles, and live footage of Shaun’s circus performance on stage.
There is an over-reliance on the gargantuan screen. During the initial introductions of the flock and Bitzer the dog, extended clips from the television series play in the background for a significant stretch of time, pulling young audience members’ attention away from the live woolly-dressed acrobatic performers who are physically embodying these characters onstage.
This highlights a lack of characterisation that arguably stems from the change in medium. While the claymation series is rich in charm and emotional clarity, bringing its silent characters vividly to life on screen, this theatrical circus adaptation must rely almost entirely on physicality across a vast stage with a large audience stretching to the back of the room, which at times means the individuality of the flock feels limited. Attempts to replicate Aardman’s dry, mathematical, sheepy sarcasm doesn’t translate comfortably at this scale; paired with the constant smiling and bleating after each trick, the overall tone feels misaligned with the size of the stage.
However, the three pigs’ clowning – played by Asha Colless, Maya Davies, Tristan St John, and Anaïs Stewart – injects much-needed comic energy into the circus. They snort and pull faces earnestly at the audience, gurning for laughs on the trapeze or from behind their trough. Additionally, Jordan Twartz excels in multiple roles, from Timmy’s Mum to the Farmer and Shirley, delivering each with clear personality and precise comedic timing.
Shaun the Sheep’s Circus Show is a fun-filled family night out, bound to keep Shaun-obsessed children content – though whether it sustains adult interest beyond the novelty of seeing acrobats dressed as farm animals is more debatable. The experience can feel repetitive at times, and the absurdly large TV screen quickly becomes distracting. That said, the performers’ technique is consistently impressive, and for Aardman fans, even the sight of the merchandise stand is worth a visit.
Shaun the Sheep’s Circus Show runs at Aviva Studios (The Hall) until January 4.
Photo: Prudence Upton
JADAR 