Despite a gobbledygook narrative this high-energy song-and-circus spectacular is pretty irresistible.
First there's the interactive pre-show - be sure to arrive an hour before curtain up as there are fortune tellers, barking booths, tumbling and close up magic to enjoy in the spaces around the Empress Museum's barn-like big top.
Buy a drink at the Carousel bar and wander around areas dressed with circus costumes, caravans, and paraphernalia like ventriloquist dummies and conjuring props.
Then there are Pasek and Paul's soaring tunes from the hit film The Greatest Showman, every one of them, played live! The likes of Re-write the Stars, This is Me, A Million Dreams, Never Enough and From Now On should be familiar to most and under Matthew Brind's first class music production are anchored by a tremendous trio of female singers.
Then there's the cast of multi-skilled aerialists, acrobats, fire-eaters, juggler, tightrope walkers and clowns who also seem to dance and sing - you lose count of how many threats they represent.
A stage version of the PT Barnum inspired Greatest Showman is in the pipeline so the film's poignant themes of love across the class divide and the showfolk outcasts finding family in the circus are not in play here.
Instead Creative Director Simon Hammerstein awkwardly grafts the songs onto a barely comprehensible plot about Aaliya Mai's young 'Roustabout' Max whose stroppy trapeze artist boyf doesn't want her to accept the invite from Simon Bailey's ringmaster to take over.
Oddly for a circus show there's zero jeopardy - certainly not from the black masked shadow showman who haunts the action. Happily Hammerstein is masterful at marshalling frenetic eye-popping bursts of activity with twirling aerialists, contortionists, cyr-wheelers, and hand balancers accompanying lung-bursting uplifting ballads.
It can be an assault on the senses, so quieter moments like Tightrope, when backstage circus folk bathe and rock babies alongside a stunning slackwire act, are much appreciated.
Elsewhere there are fabulous feats on teeterboard, aerial straps and hand balancing to rival any circus, and Bailey makes strong work of show tunes Come Alive and From Now On.
Overall this Showman mash up is great fun for all the family, just don't ask what it's about.
Come Alive! runs is booking until March 30th 2025 at The Empress Museum in Earl's Court.
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