DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME: Circus! Seduction! Burlesque! Insanity! Danger! Romance! promises the steamy, nail-biting trailer for UK couple Charlie and Rachel Atlas’s Death Do Us Part Danger Show. The couple’s latest work, Love Hurts, is a celebration of Valentine’s Day, but with flying knives. Picture supplied
THE oiled muscles! The flying knives! The low-cut wedding dress! Feminists look away: old-fashioned carnival entertainment that includes knife-throwing, sword-swallowing, burlesque, comedy, stunts and red-hot costumes is about to roll into town.
February 14 is Valentine’s Day but world-touring circus superstars Charlie and Rachel Atlas keep the romance and knife-throwing
alive into the next day at Smash Palace with their new show, Love Hurts. The Atlases share a passion for the kind of carnival exotica Occupational Health and Safety frowns upon and have towed the old-time circus art form into the 21st century with inventive twists, a rock n’ roll edge and viral internet videos.
“The graceful Jacqueline Furey ... seamlessly marries magic and burlesque (the two are so well suited it’s amazing no one has thought of it before),” enthused one reviewer of a 2016 Death Do Us Part Danger Show performance.
“Host Rachel Atlas and her husband Charlie Atlas (Scotland’s answer to Hugh Jackman) participate in what is still the most terrifying knife throwing act we’ve ever seen.
Love Hurts has love, lust and trust at its heart. Providing no one in the audience coughs at the wrong time, that heart should not be seen spouting blood into the sawdust.
