Empire

Empire is a travelling circus-type entertainment show, which has travelled the world with their own spiegeltent, which is set up in various open-air places in the cities of the world. This arrangement means that they don't have to try to fit their equipment onto various different-sized and differently set up stages in theatres, which could have disastrous effects if something went wrong.

The show is billed as an adult entertainment, and whilst there's no nudity, it does contain some semi-naked men and women, and "adult themes" and language. There was also the promise of comedy, vaudeville, and burlesque. Who could resist? Certainly not us!

We met up in the Crab Shack for some dinner beforehand - another of Simon Gault's restaurants, where they provide you with mainly seafood-based dishes. Nicola and I both went for the Cajun-spiced fish of the day, which was gurnard. It's an informal dining arrangement, - there's no bookings - so we turned up with plenty of time in case we couldn't get a table straight away. In the event we were seated straight away, but waited a bit whilst our party assembled.

A short walk down the waterfront to the spiegeltent, set up outside St John's Bar on what I had hitherto not known was called Odlin's Plaza, where we met the rest of our party and settled into our booth. A waitress took our order for wine, and we waited for the show to begin.

The show starts with a contortionist in a perspex ball, To call the rest of the show an acrobatic spectacular is to seriously undersell it. That they could do various acrobatic feats is a given - it was the entertainment value that was added in that makes it spectacular. And very funny too - where Cirque De Soleil is too far up it's own arse with seriousness, this was very funny. You'll never look at a banana in the same way again, that's for sure!