“Mission Control, I think we’re in Sydney”. So begins the vocal soundtrack accompanying much of the action in Cirque Stratosphere, a new “space themed circus” promising “death-defying, logic-imploding, head-spinning stunts and aerial acts”, produced by Simon Painter and Tim Lawson, the makers of Circus 1903, Le Noir and The Illusionists.

The vocal recording has the fuzzy, hissy sound of messages between mission control and astronauts in space, and since it’s often featured on top of booming music you can’t hear a lot of what’s said, but you get the idea.

The Clown (Salvador Salangsang). Photograph © Jordan Munns

The opening number sees The Clown (Salvador Salangsang) get two audience members up on stage to play drums – which turn out to be the drum rolls in the iconic opening of Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, famously used in 2001: A Space Odyssey – a fun start for the space themed show. The framing device also includes people marching on stage dressed in space suits, and a sequence in which giant inflated balls resembling the Earth are paraded around to cover a scene change. There’s flashing, colourful strobe lighting and a pounding soundtrack, but the acts...