THEATRE REVIEW

JUNE 2026 | Volume 264

 

The Cultch has established a long-running holiday-season favourite with the East Van Panto. Now it looks to be setting up another tradition: a late-spring, early-summer, Cirque du Soleil-style vaudeville circus party with spectacular acrobatics, blasting music and comic shtick. Last June it was Haus of Yolo from New Zealand. This year it’s Sophie’s Surprise 29th from the UK to end the 2025-26 season.

This show is big non-stop fun with plenty of audience involvement, good-humoured comedy, a rather racy soundtrack and, what it’s really all about, remarkable physical feats of strength, speed, flexibility, timing and balance.

The chaos begins in the pre-show and ends with a raucous, all-in Bon Jovi karaoke. In between, the six performers—Katharine Arnold, Isis Clegg-Vinell, Nathan Price, Thomas Evans, Angie McIlroy-Wagar and Sam Goodburn—do their things, joined by “Sophie,” the birthday girl plucked from the audience, and the entire audience from time to time.

They perform somewhat familiar aerial routines on ropes and hoops, and the acrobatic balancing on each other’s hands and shoulders.There’s the female contortionist who twists her body in extraordinary, impossible, painful-looking ways, and later works with a giant balloon intowhich she somehow partly and then fully climbs. And the male unicyclist who comes out naked, covering his groin with his hand, and eventually dresses himself with Sophie on his shoulders while cycling. The routines are breathtaking or funny-weird or both, but never boring. These are world-class acrobats. Some of the silly stuff could go—a guy reading from his novel-in-progress(!?)—but 95% of the show is high-octane, eye-popping, class-Acircus.

I found the loud recorded music a bonus. I didn’t know the songs, but Googling the lyrics afterwards I discovered “I Touch Myself” by The Divinyls (“When I think about you, I touch myself”) and “Bathroom Bitch” by Holy Child (“I wanna fuck you in the bathroom, I wanna fuck you on the roof of my car …”). There’s nothing especially erotic in the performance, and the lyrics are mostly drowned out by the music. Still, the program recommends the show for ages16+.

At 2 ½ weeks, Sophie’s Surprise 29th has a longer run than nearly all the other Cultch shows except the Panto, and somewhat higher priced tickets. But it’s still a lot cheaper than Cirque du Soleil and you’ll come out of there with much the same buzz.

 

 

 

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