Jenny and I almost didn’t make it to tonight’s Afrika Afrika show which would have been such a disappointment. The Jubilee line was having a shocker of a day today and once that goes down, as we found out, getting to the O2 can be a giant mish. What should have been a simple one-hour journey turned into a three-hour mare thanks firstly to broken down trains, then traction problems and then finally power failures to practically the entire line. That we got stuck in the tunnels in between stations and in the dark for nearly half an hour was potentially horrifying and then the mob at Bank to get onto the DLR was nearly our undoing. I certainly felt sorry for the one station attendant who was valiantly trying to stop us getting on to the platform. Her efforts were wasted however as the mob managed to overcome her. I still don’t know if she ran when we broke through or if she got run over because I certainly didn’t see her
again! And speaking of not seeing people again – we were supposed to meet Mirela and Sabrina at the O2 but they didn’t even make it in the end!

It would have been nice to get to the O2 early to soak up the ambience of the show and its set up. The circus is hosted in the Tented Palaces at the back of O2 which have been themed to bring that African flavour to London. There is a café etc. there but there are also some hot food offerings which are basically dished out on to paper plates for immediate consumption. Surprisingly tasty (they even managed to make the cous yummy) and, though quite small in portions, at between £4-£5 a pop was not too much of a rip-off.

But on to the main event. I wasn’t actually planning on going to check out Afrika Afrika for some reason but Sandra pointed out a really good deal to get free tickets and to my surprise I ended up with six free! I’ve seen quite a few modern circuses in my life with the premier circus franchise being Cirque du Soleil so when I saw that Afrika Afrika promised to deliver an African feel to this formula I thought how could it possibly compare. To be frank I was surprised by just how good and enjoyable the show was. Sure some of the acts I’ve seen various versions of before (but I could still wonder at them) but more surprising to me were some of the imaginative spins given to the traditional circus skills.

We wondered at a game of basketball (including the slam dunking) played on unicycles (absolutely amazing) and then skipping with their unicycles, the man who spun giant plates (up
to ten at once I think) who also had this trick of spinning a plate on an umbrella and then spraying a fountain of water from his mouth (I still don’t know how he stored the water), the two contortionists – one man (who manipulated his way through a tennis raquet) and one woman (who was simply amazing – when you think of the term beside yourself she was literally beside herself on quite a few occasions), the acrobats who climbed each other and created human pyramids, and the pole artists (climbing poles in crazy ways and then jumping pole to pole). Added to this were the some less traditional circus acts such as tap versus stomp dancing, breakdancing, and dudes doing spinning and bouncing tricks with basketballs.

The audience provided some of the entertainment to me as well – in particularly screaming with wonder when the contortionists manipulated themselves into unimaginable positions. The largest screams came when the acrobats built themselves into a 4-5 man high tower and then fell forward like a tree falling over – as no man moved until they were practically about to smash their faces into the ground this caused quite a bit of a thrill to the crowd – in Jenny in particular!

Afrika Afrika wasn’t just about what was going on on stage. The music was brilliant with the most amazing singers and the atmosphere in the tent was very cool with projections of various pictures up on to the tent walls. The lighting was actually also very good adding to our impressions of the show and serving to highlight significant moments.

The only drawback, which we didn’t suffer from, is that it can turn out to be quite a pricey night with top tickets selling at nearly £60 and the lowest available being £19 (which is actually £1 more than the lowest price ticket available at the upcoming Cirque Du Soleil show Varekai.) Once you add drinks and food you could end up blowing your entertainment budget for the month.

Overall though the show is simply amazing and a very entertaining night. You will definitely walk away in awe of the skills and imagination on display in this show.