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Years after the events of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, the survivors of the Circus are gathered. Bellboy has a plan. A plan that won’t just save them but stop them needing to be saved at all. All it takes is putting the band back together, a mostly functional time ship and the power of rock and roll.

But who’s Ella?

Kenton Hall, Barnaby Eaton-Jones and Christopher Guard, faced with the impossible task of following up on one of the Seventh Doctor’s oddest stories, have achieved the impossible: they’ve not only done it, but done it as an audio drama and rock opera. Linear time is the characters’ foe but the script’s friend.

The cast are uniformly excellent, but Guard’s exhausted, desperate Bellboy is a standout, a rock star pushing flat out past the redline, burning out and fading away in the hopes that sacrifice will erase itself and give him what all good performers pray for: a comeback. Ideas fly as thick and fast as great performances and there are multiple moments where you have to just sit back and applaud. Sophie Aldred is fantastic as Captain Gren and AJ, the time ship captain and the sentient rust that is her reluctant co-pilot. The performances genuinely read as two different people and Aldred gets some of the best jokes and a couple of the big emotional beats. Dee Sadler too as Flowerchild and newcomer Ella gives two entirely different performances in conversation with one another, often literally. Ian Reddington’s Delios, the Circus poet, also gets to play with these toys and there’s a poem performed by two versions of Delios at once that is bleak, cold, funny and the anchor the entire second half swings around.

This Circus has a very flat team structure and everyone gets a moment or two in the spotlight. Toyah Wilcox is spectacular as the Band of Infinite Harmony, a gestalt musician maimed into something approaching harmonious perfection by the Gods of Ragnarok and Sylvester McCoy has tremendous fun in a cameo as the High Poet. This is a very eccentric assignment but it’s one every single cast member understands and excels at. It also pushes the audio format in audacious and often very successful ways.

The songs are wildly varied, always drive the story and are attacked with gusto. They’re witty and smart, emotionally honest just like the story. If there’s a weakness here it’s that I’d love to find out a little more about them. Liner notes would be wonderful but their absence doesn’t hurt the story, just doesn’t quite let it soar.

The core of the story is the fact no one is alone, not even these traumatized art refugees. The Gods of Ragnarok need performers, the circus needs an audience. It’s not that everyone gets a second chance, so much as everyone gets an encore and by the end of the story, it’s clear that everyone involved more than deserves it. Also, the final line here is the single best button that could be put on this story.

Verdict: Exuberant, wickedly clever and open hearted, this is a Big Top number that deserves to be heard. Ready your applause. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart