Shaun the Sheep an amazing Circus

Janiqueel explores the delightful new Shaun the Sheep Circus Show at Marina Bay Sands

For millions of years, flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years, sheep have been eating them all the same.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

No stranger to fandom and the occasional thorn, Shaun the Sheep found fame from his appearance in the uber-popular film, Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave way back in 1995 and in Wallace and Gromit’s Cracking Contraptions in 2002. Add to those sensations, a TV Claymation series that reintroduced Shaun and his friends to the world. As Shaun and his pals become cute, witty, engaging – almost-human – players in two films and a shedload of spinoffs.

At their home, Mossy Bottom Farm, the sheep, and other farm habitués find life super-comfortable. But, let’s be honest, just a tad on the bland side. A farm and those who dwell therein are creatures of habit, right? Right – but characters like Shaun are inquisitive, adventure-seeking sheep out to find comical adventures at Mossy Bottom Farm. And they do, in the most acrobatic, high-flying, breathtaking musical performances.

These actors are acrobats or these acrobats are actors – take your choice. Whatever – they sing, dance, josh, and joke their way through a romping string of skits each long enough to tell a darn good story. Yet not so long as to become tedious for the younger member of the audience. These energetic actors – just nine of them – put on quite a show bouncing between characters and performing acrobatics that delight and astound with their daring and originality. After seeing the show, kids will want to flip, fly, and flounce around their own house. Don’t let them.

Instead, let the young ones remember and imitate the wild cast of characters whose short, simple stories are told through song, dance, acrobatics, interplay, and gesture. There is no dialogue. The scenes skip jauntily along following Shaun, the main character, of course, as he and the farmyard friends seek to help Farmer with his newly-purchased, but now on the blink, television set. That set becomes an integral part of the plot until it is struck by an electrical calamity. Before that the action, or at least part of it, takes place on a large video screen minted above the stage.

How is the TV finally repaired?

Sorry, that’s a secret best kept until you see the performance. And you should. Janiqueel recommends that you go to see one of the most charming, fantastically physical performances to grace the stage of Marina Bay Sand Theatre. Adults, don’t be shy of attending without a child in tow. If you have one or two nearby, however, you and they will be thrilled by the reactions Shaun the Sheep Circus Show generates.

The show is character-centered with some fantastic scenes like:

The Farmer opens a large box early on to find a television set that, later in the play loses electricity when a mysterious and large pair of scissors cut off the power supply. His quest to bring the TV to life becomes the fulcrum of the plot.

Sheepdog Bitzer brings the cliched antipathy between dogs and postal deliverers to life. Sliding and leaping to heights one might have thought impossible. The postman shows us that delivering mail is an athletic feat.

Shaun and Blitzer are thrown together when a new remote control for the TV arrives. Their delight and earnest work to get the remote working generates one of the most acrobatic sequences.

Timmy the adorable lamb loses his kite in the trees. Watch as the whole cast tries gamely to retrieve it. Everyone is eager to help but finds the retrieval far more difficult than they expected.

Shirley is a chubby sheep who loves pizza and provides comic interpretations of the action in which she is involved.

In the midst of all this action and intrigue, a runaway tire provides a prop with which the cast can tumble and cavort just like in a circus. Because this IS a circus of the first rank. After the interval, the cast decides to mount their own show, Definitely Not Shaun the Sheep’s Circus Show that takes up the entire second act and mines new depths of hilarity and good, clean FUN.

Spend an afternoon or evening with the denizens of Mossy Bottom Farm. You and the kids (find some, if you don’t have your own) are gonna love it – Guaranteed!