The circus is in town. Kind of.

For most of us, going to the circus means visiting a big top in a field. For their latest tour, however, the Moscow State Circus have taken a different tack, opting to forgo the tents and caravans and put on their show inside. And this week it was the turn of the New Theatre.

Despite the setting, most of the trademark attractions were there – tumblers, acrobats, jugglers and the like. And very good they were too. No animals though, of course. Also good.

Highlights came in the shape of a spectacularly beautiful trapeze dance – the acrobatic, draped in a floaty red dress, flying through the air in great swoops, attached to just a thin strap – at one point wrapped around her neck.

It was spellbinding – and the ripple of applause from the lightly populated theatre, on Tuesday, did not do it justice.

Similarly gorgeous was a tight rope performance of the most incredible complexity, requiring a superhuman sense of balance from another deceptively slim, but clearly powerfully muscular, young woman. Clearly the Russians still train great acrobats, just as they do ballet dancers.

Another highpoint came from a group of roller skaters who flung each other around while spinning at speed on a raised podium.

What let it down was the contrived narrative thread which was intended to bind it all together. This was based on the folkloric tale of Cvetik-Semicvetik, or the Flower with Seven Colours by Valentin Petrovich Katayev. Each of the flowers represents a wish, and we were presented, at intervals, with a sparkly young woman and a scruffy older man, who acted out the story. The problem was, it just wasn’t done very well.

They may be great circus performers, but none are actors, and it shows, rendering it just a bit cheesy and amateurish – which is a shame, because the actual substance – the mindboggling feats of balance and dexterity – were very impressive indeed.

3/5