Paul in London

A Simple Space, by Australian-based circus troupe  Gravity and Other Myths , is the latest round of circus offering at the Udderbelly Festival  at the Southbank Centre . Between the amazing feats of acrobatics you can hear a constant sound. The sound of heavy breathing. It is coming from the stage. This is pretty intense stuff here and the energy and sweat from the performers is audible and palpable. And in the space of the giant purple cow, where you are up close to the performers, it seems much more intense and intimate.

Confronting your demons has never felt so exhausting or in your face as with Craft Theatre's physical and modern update of Dante's Inferno. You enter The Rag Factory in Shoreditch with the performers already running around with bamboo sticks, jumping and tumbling about. There is an assumption that you are probably sophisticated theatre-going folk so you know that this is part of the process of mental and physical exhaustion the company uses to get the actors in the right frame of mind for their performance. You will also observe that some of the performers have feet and wrists bandaged so perhaps the unexpected injury happens here as well. As most of the audience is sitting with a front row seat to the action, it can make you feel nervous as bodies fall and tumble rather close to you.

Today the streets of central London have been taken over by a pop up circus called Piccadilly Circus Circus. From lunchtime today until the finale at 8pm more than 240 international circus artists including aerialists, high wire trapeze artists, hula hoopers, jugglers, stilt acrobats, not so stilted acrobats, tightrope walkers, looserope walkers, acrobats, Chinese pole artists, Polish Chinese artists, aerial dance performers, contemporary clowns, musicians and the like will be around to distract shoppers and force you whip out your camera-phone and experience it all... I caught the opera singers and drummers earlier today but events continue throughout the afternoon. The finale at Piccadilly Circus will be where French artists’ Les Studios de Cirque presents the UK premiere of Place des Anges. The piece is about a renegade group of angels who are drawn down to the Earth, and begin to shed their wings, and their feathers fall on the unsuspecting spectators below… With zip wires stru...

Briefs, the all-male circus cabaret is part circus act, part drag act, part strip tease and part filth. The boys from Brisbane Australia are back in the UK for the next couple of months touring with their show. It is a rough and rowdy sort of show and while it lacks the polish of other circus acts (including Cantina which they follow this week at the London Wonderground on the South Bank), they make up for it in energy, shock value and some impressive acrobatic feats. It is billed as burlesque with balls and there are plenty of them on display, either tucked between the legs or dangled over an unsuspecting member of the audience and a tray of raw sausages... If that doesn't sound like your idea of a good time, it probably is not the show for you. Others will find it a guilty pleasure... Saturday night's performance had quite a few hen nights in the audience and this definitely is a show for girls who have had too much to drink and want to see full frontal nudity in a mil...

The London Wonderground on the South Bank is currently playing host to Cantina, an Australian circus production that is unique in its blend of theatre and physical performance with a lashings of pain. Actually, a lot of pain. Broken glass, high heels, broken limbs feature so prominently it could be billed as the Cirque De Sade if that wasn't already the name for a fetish night in Canada . The production manages to take the circus act and make it new by becoming sexy, violent and painful. Is it real or is it escapism? It is hard to tell but it is awfully enjoyable and classy night out full of laughs and some genuine surprises that will have audiences gasping.

Cirque Du Soleil's journey of the origin of the species - Totem - returns to the Royal Albert Hall for a limited run. Directed by  Robert Lepage , it is a thrilling and beautiful show. People fly through the air, juggle, unicycle, play tricks and clown around. It is all spectacular stuff.

It was survival of the acrobats at Totem, Cirque du Soleil's latest production which opened tonight at Royal Albert Hall . This spectacular show traces the journey of humans from amphibians to acrobats in glittering costumes. It all goes to show that we have come a long way (or at least some of us have). The comedy relief was more hit than miss so in this evolutionary tale the acrobats are ahead. First impressions below... Listen! Listen!