Once a year, every year, my mum asks whether it’s too late for her to pack her career in and join the circus. I’m holding Gifford’s Circus responsible. Back in 2000, the touring company began life on the village greens of Gloucestershire. Ticketholders would decamp onto their local commons and enter a world of kitsch comedy and glittering glamour. Since then, the circus has become a fixture on grassy patches across the UK, but remained a Cotswolds institution. I went to my first Gifford’s, a show I was too young to remember, in 2002. But those mid-Noughties circus trips underscored my childhood and have called me back year again and again.
If you’re not a regular Gifford’s-goer, chances are the word “circus” conjures images of moustache-twiddling ringleaders, huge-scale audiences and questionable animal practices. Gifford’s has banished all of that. It’s more of a musical – and a particularly intimate one. Each year has a new story, a theme and loose plot that’s weaved throughout and links the acts. There’s a live band, who sometimes play covers, sometimes perform entire original soundtracks; the show ends with a giant musical number involving all the acts. They all give it a go, although the show’s choreographer Kate Smyth tells me it’s the least favourite part for many of the performers. Even tightrope walkers get nervous sometimes.
