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Roll up for the big time

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Barnum, Cultural Centre, Grand Theatre, until December 12.

ROLL up, roll up! The big time musical has finally arrived in Hong Kong despite the sceptics and, yes, it looks like being a going concern.

At the least, Barnum 's backers deserve a medal for bravery, but there is more than pioneering spirit in this razzle-dazzle show based on the life of that 19th century phenomenon, Phineas Taylor Barnum.

Something of the huge excitement he created with his extravaganzas really does infect Barnum. And against the odds, that aura peculiar to the circus world is recreated in a conventional theatre.

Not perfectly, of course. For one thing, the sawdust is missing. For another, Barnum's story, as super-glossed by Mark Bramble, makes for formidable pacing, but tends to the shallow and fragmented.

Paul Nicholas, in the title role, gets the brunt of it, not that it appears to bother him. He revels in the physical challenges and opening night saw him in top form, though the unremitting show-pony act came perilously close to falling flat.

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