I was going to go to the show but after the first few reviews I decided to spend my money on shows I knew I’d enjoy far more.
Here’s a few of the reviews…
"When should you not write about a show because that would feed it the oxygen of publicity? I’ve been thinking about this over the past couple of days, after seeing the Jim Rose Circus here in Edinburgh.
It’s 10 years since the circus was last in town and things have moved on from the days when eating glass and pretending to crush somebody’s balls with a sledgehammer had city councillors frothing at the mouth and demanding the show be closed down. Goodness knows you can now see this stuff on Channel 5 any night, and Rose’s particular brand of exhibitionism has become commonplace in reality TV shows. The I’m a Celebrity bushtucker trials make the stunt where a woman who puts a scorpion in her mouth seem tame. I can’t imagine anyone getting worked up by this circus’s tricks, which include pretending to swallow goldfish and action painting using the anus - a technique of which Jackson Pollock might have approved.
At the box office they stress the adult nature of the show, yet as far as I can make out the content was devised entirely by a nerdy 14-year-old boy. I suppose they need a little PR spin when the content is as thin as it is here.
Rose has always thrived on ratcheting up the outrage to sell tickets by the shedload - in the early days he joined forces with that master of PR spin Mark Borkowski. I had hoped that 10 years on we might be more discerning, but I fear not.
I certainly don’t want to play into Jim Rose’s hands by creating controversy. But the most outrageous thing about his circus is its objectification of women and their bodies, and its overt disgust about vaginas and female bodily fluids. The sexual politics of the Jim Rose Circus are Neanderthal, and yet like chumps we just sit there and don’t object as we watch vaginas being apparently sliced by 20 razor blades and women enjoying being raped all in the name of entertainment.
There will be plenty who claim that this is simply camp fun in the same vein as shows such as Puppetry of the Penis. But I expect these are the same people who think that going to lap dancing clubs makes an ironic statement and that pole dancing empowers women.
The past 15 years have seen such widespread acceptance - by both women and men - of the Nuts culture, that I suspect few will object to this show. And at a let-it-all-hang-out, anything-goes festival, I risk being a party pooper for saying that I do.
But somebody’s got to object, because I felt that I was wrong to just sit there and watch. Even though I’m giving him publicity by writing this, to keep silent would be to collude with what he’s doing."
"The return of the Jim Rose Circus to the Fringe has been heralded with all the fanfare of a second coming - a strange deification, considering the show is set in Hell.
Sadly, the carnivalesque sideshow atmosphere of yore has been obliterated in favour of overtly sexualised escapades. A tired-looking Rose plays the Devil, surrounded by scantily clad minions and Warthog, a heavy metal band whose members will do anything to get through the gates of Hell.
The result is a muddled mix of the commonplace and the truly ludicrous. The first stunt of the evening, in which Rose swallows and regurgitates a series of razor blades, simply doesn’t get the crowd’s blood pumping. And when one of his female performers imitates a mental health patient and takes a knife to her genitalia to the tune of ‘Only Women Bleed’ - after pretending to masturbate on stage - the audience reaction is a mix of nervous laughter and blank-faced disapproval.
Padded out with metal covers - ‘Highway to Hell’ and ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ both get a look in - and completely bereft of any sense of wonder or amazement, this once-lauded spectacle could effectively have wrecked its reputation as one of the most celebrated acts on the Fringe. ‘I didn’t want to come back to Edinburgh until I had a show that would top all my other shows,’ Rose crows at one point. You should have stayed away, Jim."
This was about the kindest review…and it was still pretty un-inviting.
"This is not a show that actually merits any stars. This is not a show that really merits a review. This show hardly merits an audience. However it contains, quite literally, some of the strangest and most disgusting things my poor eyes have ever been assaulted with and for that and that alone it is really worth a watch.
Returning to the fringe after a decade long absence the Jim Rose Circus boast the most outrageous and blindly shocking show yet and no one can call gentlemen Jim a liar. This hour of explosive fun and manic terror take you down the stairway to hell and brings you out the other side, sullied and smeared with sin…You really run out of hyperbole for this kind of production.
It would be a crime to reveal any of the actual events that occur in the show, their horrific beauty and staggering debauchery are in their reveal. See it for yourself. Safe to say it is rather like experiencing a Hieronymus Bosch painting spurt and tumble onto stage. It is rip-roaring fun with some great music but there was hardly a moment where the audience were not looking through their hands.
On a serious note, while all these grotesque and outrageous acts are meant to shock, what was truly uncomfortable was most likely unintended: The women that strut and perform these sordid tasks of herculean proportions have the look that you only see in sex trafficking documentaries; emaciated and damaged, their tired eyed let slip a sadness that their forced smiles can not cloak. I did have to wonder what form their payment would take. More harrowing was Jim Rose himself: He is the zenith of electric confidence when the focus is on him, a swaggering, swearing demonic juggernaut, but the moment he slips into the shadows and the focus is elsewhere he changes: Jim looks tired. Jim looks old. Jim has the kind of weary thousand yard stare that sighs ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ But maybe I am reading into this all too much…
This show will be a massive polariser. You will leave hating it, loving it or simply speechless and looking for something to get rid of the mental images."