Women shine in padded show

MULAN — Chinese State Circus, Lowry, Salford

YOU will probably know the Disney animated movie of the girl who became one of the Emperor of China’s great warriors without ever letting on she was a woman.

If this show is anything to go by, you almost wish she had revealed her secret. For a couple of thousand years later, no one would be trying to shoehorn average circus acts into a poorly-told tale the movie does a lot better.

British circus entrepreneur Philip Gandey has been touring his Chinese State Circus for several years, and a similar martial arts show under the heading of the Shaolin Warriors.

Here he brings the two together neither terribly well nor successfully, and the result is pretty tedious. There’s a good hour bumped to two, courtesy of huge expanses of time wasted watching martial arts artists getting themselves psyched up. This seems to consist of waving their arms about and contorting a lot.

Indeed of the half-dozen “incredible Shaolin Warriors”, only one does anything of note; the rest posture and gyrate menacingly, but don’t actually do much.

The one worker — I hope he’s getting paid more — supports himself on a dodgy-looking spear on his abdomen; is supported by four more, sharper-looking spears on thighs and shoulders, then bends a couple of admittedly rather limp-shafted spears with the points against his throat.

Among the rest are a passable parallel-poles routine, some nice flying acrobats, a mediocre bowmen routine and the usual clever, highly-acrobatic tumblers.

The lows include the excruciating narrated interjections of a Monkey King character and Pig, a traditional Chinese figure so traditional this one is done up as a New York taxi driver. Because he’s zany. This pair keep dragging us back to the boring Mullein story when the acts alone, even these acts, would be far more interesting.

But in this show as in the story, the women come off best. The most heroic act of the night is the female unicyclists, controlling their 6ft-high machines with one foot while the other flings pie tins for themselves or the rest of the group to catch on their head. It has control, amazing skills and genuine watchability.

You can’t really say that about much of the rest of the evening.