If you have a show in the Shire area, we can send a reviewer – and your show can appear on these pages too! Email editorial@ shiremagazine.co.uk. Get in touch! Discover what Shire’s team thought of the concerts, live events and theatre shows they’ve seen over the past couple of months at local venues
RUNNING WILD AT BEWILDERWOOD After a long winter, a day out at BeWILDerwood was just the tonic. Set in 70 acres of woodland in Cholmondeley, Cheshire, the place is full of wooden treehouses, sky mazes, slides and zip wires. Twiggles, Boggles and Crocklebogs from the enchanting books by creator Tom Blofeld pop up throughout the woods. We took three children aged 10 to 14 – and the teens had
as much fun as the younger one. Adults can join in too. We squealed down the drop slides, got lost in the maze and all piled onto the giant swing. The children shouted and laughed for the four hours we were there. There are lots of activities at ground level too, from den building to storytelling and craft tents. No technology, theme park rides or plastic tat in the gift shop – just good, old-fashioned fun that left them with rosy cheeks and beaming faces. AB HHHHH Cheshire.bewilderwood.co.uk
CIRQUE DU VULGAR OSWESTRY SHOWGROUND Circus Funtasia has a sister act, strictly for adults only. Featuring the same cast in the same Big Top location, on Saturday night all the afternoon’s childfriendly capers transform feats of skill, all interspersed with great comic timing and into drunken debauchery. some very rude Ushered inside jokes indeed. by actors in varying “Trapeze Not for the stages of undress, in a very faint-hearted, hugely who proceed to drink, argue and revealing original and just great fun. We loved fornicate in the kilt” it, and the audience seating even before was cheering and the show starts, it’s applauding each new act until all a bit unsettling and you wonder what you’re in for. the ‘wheel of death’ finale featuring a male trapeze artist But when the shows starts it in a very revealing kilt. DB is spectacular – death-defying cirqueduvulgar.com HHHHH fire and high-wire acts, and 54 SHIRE MAGAZINE | May/June 2022
CIRCUS FUNTASIA LIVES UP TO ITS NAME
intimate confines of the Big Top, you really get to look ex-professional gymnast and now aerial acrobat I haven’t been to the Lucy Ladbrooke in the eye as she flies circus since I can’t “Lucy above the audience. remember when, flies and to my shame I With an uplifting over the soundtrack, plenty of realised my kids had never been, so it was fire and performers crowd” who seemed like great to have the chance to see Circus friends by the end of Funtasia in Telford. the almost two-hour The 20-strong cast are show, we couldn’t help but be all multi-skilled performers, impressed by the spectacle of many doing several acts. In the it all. HG HHHHH
DOM JOLY’S HOLIDAY SNAPS AT MARKET DRAYTON FESTIVAL CENTRE Dom Joly has visited 126 countries and Festival Centre volunteer Dave Hewitt 127. But Dom’s show was subtitled Travel and Comedy in the Danger Zone and Dave laughed Syrian desert – along with a trip whose sole purpose was to and shuddered through the ‘scare an Eskimo’. The journey as much transatlantic practical as anyone. Well known for joke was crass, juvenile “Crass, his wild pranks and very funny. juvenile Joly’s narrative and in the hit show and very PowerPoint started Trigger Happy TV, funny” with Tintin, books Joly’s mischievous he devoured as a daring and comic touch were as child through three sharp as ever. He brought to years of civil war in Lebanon. Perhaps they helped develop life his travels to a deserted Chernobyl, the killing fields his attraction for the surreal as well as for danger. JH HHHH of Cambodia and a cave in the
