Mavericks comprises the regular World Buskers Festival combo of Miss Behave and Daredevil Chicken, along with guests from this year’s street performers.

Host, Miss Behave, dressed as and impersonating a fading cabaret star, introduces the show and the succession of performers. She emphasises that an element of surprise (for both audience and performers) is the order of the night, and warns us that it could all be either magical or a bit rough-and-ready. And, while her character is consistent in its nostalgic reminiscence of the glories of times past, the humour comes across as just a little flat in this performance.

Enter Daredevil Chicken, featuring the marital anarchy of Marc and Svetlana, with a dressing-up (and dressing down) routine seen at previous years’ buskers festivals, but no less hilarious for that. How it’s all done is a mystery to me and for once the nudity, both here and later in the show, is genuinely funny.

Marc continues with a magic card trick which becomes a running gag throughout the show. The trick’s initial failure (part of the act) sets up the comedy for its subsequent recurrences, until its eventual resolution at the show’s final climax (in every sense of that word!).

Svetlana’s two songs during the act continue the theme of a fading star, but tonight the comedy of these is only mildly amusing. Individually, neither of these Daredevil Chickens quite reaches the level of their best combined acts such as the banana routine which they reprised at Sunday night’s Big Festival Gala.

The first of tonight’s guests is the remarkable Satya Bella from Australia, whose Human Gyroscope performance with hula hoops is easily as impressive, or even more so, as a similar act in Blanc de Blanc. The use of lighting, especially inside the hoops themselves, helps to turn an already superb gymnastic circus act into a visual feast of spectacle and colour – well worth seeking out at the busking pitches.

Mario Queen of the Circus from the USA is the second guest tonight. His juggling skills are supported and enhanced by witty commentary and a relaxed feel for comic timing. He asks us, in a thick Spanish accent, if we can understand him; “Yes!” we respond; “Good,” he continues, “because …!” [Spoiler averted]

The first of his two juggling routines tonight is accompanied by Queen’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, so, when a few juggling balls occasionally fall to the floor, it all looks like part of the act – maybe it is.

The show ends with some outrageous new material from Daredevil Chicken which brings a somewhat variable show, in terms of comic consistency, to a surprising close.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer