> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://melbournestagereview.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # A world in the balance: Behind the Veil - URL: https://melbournestagereview.com/a-world-in-the-balance-behind-the-veil/ - Published: 2026-09-17T13:27:16.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-17T13:28:37.000Z - Description: Funny, strange and technically thrilling, Behind the Veil builds a richly theatrical world around the extraordinary skills of NICA’s emerging circus artists. - Author: Ellen M. Scott - Tags: Reviews For much of *Behind the Veil*, one exceptionally tall circus artist wears an exceptionally large pair of trousers. They are plaid, held up by braces and reach, I can only assume, somewhere near his nipples. Elsewhere, another performer wanders about in a jacket so enormous that it nearly consumes her. Both are funny in their own right. It is only much later that the production lets us in on the joke: she climbs onto his shoulders. The jacket falls over them both, swallowing his head and meeting those enormous trousers. Suddenly, two running visual gags become one giant, improbable person. It is a wonderfully satisfying reveal, and characteristic of director Kate Fryer’s clever production. *Behind the Veil*, performed by the National Institute of Circus Arts’ second-year ensemble, is packed with ideas that are planted, revisited and transformed. For all its extraordinary feats of circus (and they *are* extraordinary), this is not simply a succession of specialist acts. It has been made, with considerable care, into a show. The world that Fryer has fashioned for us seems preoccupied with hierarchy. The production’s stated concern is with a society in which perfection and productivity are demanded and individuality suppressed, but in performance its most insistent language is one of class: who has money, who has power, who labours, and who gets to stand — sometimes quite literally — on everybody else. ![Eliza Denlay balances high above James Wilson during an acrobatic ensemble sequence.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4e/1d/4e1d8918-61fe-47b0-a53e-03b9c2038472/content/images/2026/09/NICA_BehindTheVeil_SecondYearStudents_ElizaDenlay_and_JamesWIlson.jpg) Eliza Denlay and James Wilson's acrobatics in NICA's **Behind the Veil*. Photo: Rob Blackburn. One magnificently dressed woman moves through this world with the imperiousness of someone accustomed to being obeyed. At one point, the ensemble crouches before her, backs arranged into a human staircase. She ascends them. They rearrange themselves ahead of her. She keeps walking. Then, as she descends, they do it all again. The image hardly requires interpretation: her elevation depends upon the bodies doing the work beneath her. Elsewhere she appears with great fistfuls of cash, luxuriantly fanning herself. There is also a clownish artist begging for money, hungry and poor. The aesthetic might gesture backwards in time — tailoring, braces, hats and plaids give the world a vaguely interwar quality — but the jokes land firmly in the present. In a cost-of-living crisis, and in an art form whose practitioners know something about economic precarity, the distance between those with plenty and those asking for scraps feels rather close to home. Yet *Behind the Veil* resists labouring its social argument. Instead, it toys with these themes, mischievously. A peculiar black hat, topped by a tiny flower, becomes another running joke. Put it on somebody’s head and they become helpless with laughter. Again and again it passes through the production, disrupting its hierarchies and solemnities. Eventually it reaches the wealthy woman with the cash. Even she succumbs. The tightly controlled figure breaks into laughter. It is a superb recurring device: silly, infectious and gently subversive. Fryer and assistant director Felicia (Flee) O’Brien keep fifteen developing circus artists moving through this world, each bringing a different set of specialties. And what they can do is frequently astonishing. The range alone is formidable. Elise Poulton takes to the rope and Kiera Fitzgerald the lyra; Tarnee Doye climbs a chair stack for handstands, Holly Muir works on canes and Kelsea Blackburn moves through a contortion sequence. Eliza Denlay and James Wilson pair for acrobatics, before Wilson later takes us frighteningly high above the floor on slackwire. Lara Elliot and Nina Smith spin hypnotically on the Cyr wheel, while Capri Palmer, Daniel Scrofani and Shayla Ashton take to the swinging pole. The trapeze work is wonderful, from Blackburn and Ashton on swinging trapeze to Jaran Latona-Phasuk and Doye on trapeze and tissu. Muir, Elliot and Scrofani return for a straps trio, while Nina and Imogen Smith’s flying silks are especially beautiful — one of several sequences I could happily have watched for much longer. ![Lara Elliot performs an aerial split on straps high above the floor against vivid pink lighting.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4e/1d/4e1d8918-61fe-47b0-a53e-03b9c2038472/content/images/2026/09/NICA_BehindTheVeil_SecondYearStudent_LaraElliot_Photography_RobBlackburn.jpg) Lara Elliot on straps in NICA's **Behind the Veil*. Photo: Rob Blackburn. The technical accomplishment across the ensemble is truly excellent. At several points, as performers climb improbably high or suspend themselves far above the floor, the experience becomes intensely physical for those of us watching below. *Behind the Veil* gets you in the knees. Your stomach drops while you remain perfectly safe in your seat. ![Capri Palmer and Shayla Ashton perform high above the circus floor on the swinging pole under blue lighting.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4e/1d/4e1d8918-61fe-47b0-a53e-03b9c2038472/content/images/2026/09/NICA_BehindTheVeil_SecondYearStudents_CapriPalmer_and_ShaylaAshton_Photography_RobBlackburn.jpg) Capri Palmer and Shayla Ashton on the swinging pole in NICA's **Behind the Veil*. Photo: Rob Blackburn. And then it is on to the next feat. Apparatus must come and go, performers must prepare for radically different acts, and *Behind the Veil* barely loses momentum in the process. Clowning, ensemble choreography and recurring characters turn the transitions into a rather delicious part of the performance. Laiken Jackson is a particular delight here. First appearing as the production’s “outsider” in a vintage pilot’s cap, Jackson keeps resurfacing, her clowning threading its way through the evening and into a wonderfully eccentric hat-juggling act. Christopher Lewis’s excellent sound design is instrumental in this. Its textures keep changing beneath the action: at times propulsive and dance-like, elsewhere dirtier and more industrial, full of metallic grit. Eduard Inglés’s lighting similarly allows the cavernous vertical possibilities of the National Circus Centre to become alternately exhilarating, strange and precarious. ![Lara Elliot and Nina Smith perform together inside a Cyr wheel under pink stage lighting.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4e/1d/4e1d8918-61fe-47b0-a53e-03b9c2038472/content/images/2026/09/NICA_BehindTheVeil_SecondYearStudents_LaraElliot_and_NinaSmith_Photography_RobBlackburnjpg.jpg) Lara Elliot and Nina Smith on Cyr wheel in NICA's **Behind the Veil*. Photo: Rob Blackburn. Reuben James’s costumes, created with wardrobe assistance from Melbourne Polytechnic Costume Design students, are truly exceptional. Plaids recur across sharply different silhouettes: neat tailoring and eccentric workwear, enormous trousers and engulfing jackets. They give *Behind the Veil* much of its visual character, carrying distinctions of wealth and status while embracing the bodily absurdity of clowning. \* \* \* Circus thrills in the immediate: this body, this height, this impossible balance, this moment in which something could go wrong and does not. *Behind the Veil* delivers all of that visceral pleasure with tremendous skill. Just as excitingly, Fryer and her ensemble understand that virtuosity becomes richer when it belongs to a world. *Behind the Veil* is exceptionally accomplished contemporary circus: funny, strange, beautifully designed, technically thrilling and put together with enormous confidence. And if my greatest frustration is that again and again I desperately wanted a performer to keep going — what a wonderful thing to take with me out of the theatre. --- [*Behind the Veil*](https://www.nica.com.au/BEHIND-THE-VEIL?ref=melbournestagereview.com) performs at [The National Institute of Circus Arts](https://www.nica.com.au/?ref=melbournestagereview.com), 39-59 Green Street, Prahran, until 19 September 2026. --- Disclosure: A complimentary ticket to *Behind the Veil* was provided to Melbourne Stage Review for the purpose of review. Melbourne Stage Review retains full editorial independence.