by AMY BARRATT

Cirque du Soleil, eat your heart out. Back before that homegrown institution went all Disney and Las Vegas, it was alive and exciting in the manner of La Clique, a “sideshow burlesque” now playing as part of Just for Laughs. If the Cirque is circus for grownups, La Clique is circus for adults only. It’s also terrific theatre in which the proximity of death is used as a powerful aphrodisiac. You do not want to miss this.

La Clique is way more intimate, in every sense, than the Cirque ever was. There is a chilliness and a distance to the Cirque performers, despite their form-fitting spandex. The La Clique performers are scantily clad on purpose. They know they’re gettin’ through to you.

The fifth floor of the Musée Juste Pour Rire has been transformed into a cross between a sideshow tent and a pre-war German cabaret for the North American debut of this show that began at the Edinburgh Fringe and has been hailed on at least two continents. The audience is seated (or not—standing room tickets are available) in a circle around a tiny elevated stage. Some of the action takes place in other parts of the hall, but most of the acts perform in this centre ring just a few feet from the front rows. It’s as if the acrobats, contortionist and sword-swallower had invited themselves into your living room, along with the cabaret singer and the naked magician.

Although I wasn’t completely captivated by singer Camille O’Sullivan’s first number, she won me over later in the show with a full-body rendition of “In These Shoes?” and a Marlene tribute. Where the traditional circus has acrobats and clowns, La Clique has acrobats who are also clowns. With a duo called The English Gents, for instance, character comes first—the amazing feats of strength and balance are almost an afterthought. There is a rich vein of homoeroticism in their act, as there is in David O’Mer’s climactic bathtub bit. On the female side, magician Ursula Martinez strips matter-of-factly while making a handkerchief disappear and reappear in the most surprising places. Captain Frodo’s double-jointed contortions are sometimes just too gross to watch; his persona, on the other hand, is one of the sweetest you’ll see in any show. There’s an adorable trapeze artist, Miss Flee, picked up in Australia and decked out in peacock feathers, and finally, the gorgeous, if slightly intimidating, Miss Behave, who clowns around the edges of the show until her big moment arrives in act two. After demonstrating the sharpness of her blade by slicing up an English cucumber complete with plastic wrap, she proceeds to swallow said blade, reminding us that the slightest slip means death.

La Clique takes the best parts of all its influences—circus, vaudeville, English music hall, burlesque, German kabarett—and dispenses with the rest (it feels no need, for instance, to resurrect tired old jokes that probably weren’t all that funny even in the ’30s). Where some shows keep you entertained while waiting for a single climax, this one offers climax after climax before sending you, wobbly-legged but satisfied, on your way.

La Clique plays to July 30 at various times at Musée Juste pour rire. $47.50 (seated), $25 (standing room), 514-845-2322

>> Stage Listings