Smashed

If there's one circus art being redefined at this year's Fringe, it's juggling. Preconceptions of buskers with cutlasses and unicylces will be destroyed by a visit to see Stefan Sing in Tangram, NoFit State's Hugo Oliveira, and above all, the team behind Smashed. Jugglers don't come more caustically intellectual than Gandini Juggling, who have taken as their inspiration for this sometimes brutal, two-faced show, the late German choreographer Pina Bausch.

Bausch's work saw human desires slip through body language past decorous facades. Using the motif of juggling—the ultimate in civilising behaviour, taming the force of gravity to create beauty—this is exactly what we see here. Groomed and slicked to the nines, to tea dance music, the ensemble slide gracefully on stage, offering themselves for our service. So smooth are the patterns of cascading apples they create, you have to pinch yourself every so often as a reminder of the skill on show, that sometimes seems incidental to what lies beneath.

For underneath those 1950s smiles and behind those neatly knotted ties lurk seeds of nastiness that will later erupt into a volcanic display of degradation, jealousy, bitterness and the violence of unleashed emotion. It reflects on the audience too. As Sean Gandini dodges round the stage, distracting his colleagues in imaginative ways to try and make them drop their apples, you find yourself asking: do I really want to see someone fail? Is this funny?

As an indictment on human nature it's vicious; as theatre, it's brilliant.