Win tickets to the Moscow State Circus in Southsea!

To win a family ticket, simply email [email protected] giving your name, address and day-time phone number and putting Moscow State Circus in the subject line or write to Moscow State Circus, c/o Phil Hewitt, Chichester Observer, Suite 3, First Floor, City Gates, 2-4 Southgate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8DJ. Entries to be received by midnight on August 7. Only the winners will be contacted. All other entries will be destroyed. Tickets not valid on Saturdays, Sundays or national holidays. The Moscow State Circus is on Southsea Common from August 20-26.

The Moscow State Circus promises its latest and greatest production to date as its heads to Southsea with the show Zhelaniy.

It’s a show based on the Russian folklore story of Cvetik-Semicvetik or “the flower with seven colours” by Benjamin Losin – a tale in which each of the flower petals represents a wish.

Wizard Wako and sidekick Natalia Mezentceva invite the audience to a mysterious enchanted garden, a place where dreams come true and a place to see magnificent feats of human achievement…

Show co-owner John Haze is promising plenty of fun from a thriving industry.

Everyone might seem to be stuck on screens these days, be they phones, computers or televisions, but the big top keeps on going up. In fact, these days the Moscow State Circus has got two big tops in this country.

“We do two shows a day six days a week. That’s an enormous potential audience. I think people have always loved circus arts. If you go to Covent Garden where all the buskers are, once you would have seen lots of people playing guitar, but now if you go, it’s lots of people doing circus skills.

“And if you look at Britain’s Got Talent, probably 20-30 per cent of the acts are circus acts. There isn’t much circus on TV any more, but you certainly see a lot of it on Britain’s Got Talent.”

John was brought into the Moscow State Circus to work on their press and PR on the back of his Circus of Horrors success: “When the guy that ran the company in England didn’t want to do it any more, he offered it for sale, and three of us came forward.”

As he says, the Moscow State Circus is probably the most famous circus in the world, but don’t go thinking it’s exactly what you would get in Moscow. As John explains, if you have a curry in India, it will be very different to the curry you have in the UK. And so it is with the Moscow State Circus which has been adapted to UK tastes.

No animals, for instance. And also the music is much more modern and contemporary whereas back in Russia the circus will be offering something much more traditional.

The clowns are different too – in a good way. You won’t get clowns in the face-painted, big-shoed, water-squirting style we’ve become used to over here. Russian clowns are much more comedy characters, and that’s what the Moscow State Circus will be serving up.

“Our main guy doesn’t wear any make-up at all. He dresses as an old man with a beard. But what Moscow clowns do is that they are not just there to try to be funny. They have usually got very good circus skills and are part of the circus acts itself. They try to incorporate those skills into what they do in the show.”

This year’s show features the award-winning Ruban, a 13-person springboard troupe; Stynka on the horizontal bouncing Russian bar; Veslovskiy roller-skating revolutions; Eliza Khachutryan on the high wire; Trio Atlas on the floating globes; and low wirewalker

Olga Rozhkovskaya.

Tickets on www.moscowstatecircus.com or 0844 856 5555. The Moscow State Circus is on Southsea Common from August 20-26: Thursday, 3pm and 7.45pm; Friday, 3pm and 7.45pm; Saturday, 3pm and 6pm; Sunday, 2pm and 5pm; Monday, 3pm and 7.45pm; Tuesday, 3pm and 7.45pm; and Wednesday, 2pm and 5pm.

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