With only two hours til curtain up, a motley cast of characters assembles under the not-so-big top of the Helix. Presiding over proceedings is Doktor Haze, the ringmaster both onstage and off, who tonight is faced with an unorthodox situation. It’s the second show in a three-night run of the Circus of Horrors and the Fire Finale needs to be revised – minus the fire.

The fire marshals of Dublin have banned all pyrotechnics, leaving the performers with somewhat limited variations on the inferno theme. For tonight they’ll have to make do with bog-standard fire limbo, 500,000-volt arse-electrocution and low-flying penile-projectile sparks.
Having blazed an eight-year trail from Holland to Japan via Munich to Montevideo, it’s a major blow for the Circus of Horrors.
“The only other time something like this happened was when we turned up somewhere and they said we couldn’t use any fire at all,” says electrocution maestro Voltini. “We refused to do the show. It’d be like having a strip show without nudity.”
So where were the killjoys a few days earlier when every teenage kid in town was setting off barrages of illegal fireworks and Halloween bonfires? Obviously they step in when it’s in the name of art, never mind that the Circus of Horrors folk are experienced performers working under controlled conditions. Voltini can only remember one incident where a pyrotechnics performance ever backfired, per se.
“It was November 5, 1997,” he recalls. “I used to do this trick where you hold the firework between your bumcheeks and shoot it off, but it just blew up. It was a bad firework.
“So I was standing there onstage in absolute agony. I ran straight out to find some water and all I could find was the sink in the bar. So I just sat there with my arse in the sink while all the public came out for their post-show refreshments. It was very, very painful for a good few weeks.”
Charred cheeks aside, it’s the fine line between art and agony that makes the Circus of Horrors so compelling for audiences.
When they’re not dropping jaws in arts festivals and 5000-seater stadiums throughout the world, Doktor Haze and his 26-strong crew are based in the UK. Not since the demise of Archaos, the cult French punk-circus of the 1980s, has anyone penetrated the alternative circus market like The Circus of Horrors. Theirs is an all-singing, all-dancing spectacular that combines traditional circus acts and illusions with Rocky Horror-esque musical theatre and good old-fashioned freak shows. Anything goes in the name of entertainment.
The son of a fire-eater who learnt to walk on broken bottles at the ripe old age of twelve, John Haze ran away from the circus when he hit his rebellious late teens. His dreams were in rock ‘n’ roll - something which ultimately found it’s way back into the big top when he met with kindred spirit and British circus baron Gerry Cottle (who, for his part, had run away to the circus in his rebellious teens).
Conceived at a funeral when the two met heads, the then-existing Cottle Sisters Circus was transformed in just two rehearsals before the Circus of Horrors made its Glastonbury debut. “The four days we were open at Glastonbury we couldn’t fit the people in the tent,” says Willy Ramsay, who is the lead aerial artist for the Circus of Horrors.
Haze’s dream came of age when the legendary Archaos founder Pierrot Bidon later came on board as artistic director. Since then the Circus of Horrors has entertained everyone from Jerry Springer and Graham Norton to Prince Charles and guests at his 50th birthday party. The Japanese Times even described the show as “better than sex”.
Well, we’re not so sure what that says about whom, but for one day – in honour of their making the pages of Ireland’s most prestigious magazine – your daring correspondent agreed to make her own circus debut. Lesson Three: Swallowing Coathangers with Wasp Boy
My teacher is Voltini’s alter ego Wasp Boy, who despite a 16-inch waist can swallow up to five swords at a time. Due in no part to a particularly spacious oesophagus, Wasp Boy’s art is all self-taught.
“I always thought sword swallowing was cool and eventually I found an old turn-of-the-century manual, which had some kind of basic instructions,” he explains. “So I spent a couple of years learning how to swallow swords before I could get onto the neon tubes.”
“It’s kinda like a crude form of yoga, ’cause I’ve learnt to control a few muscles that most people ordinarily don’t bother with. I’ve learnt to just have a certain amount of control over your sphincters in your throat and to not have a gag reaction.”
This was something that I promptly found out when I attempted to go with the bent coathanger where no toothbrush – or anything else for that matter – has gone before.
Proper cleaning of the sword is also imperative. Wasp Boy’s predecessor in the Circus of Horrors almost died from an infection caused by an audience member handling his metal pole. Wasp Boy recommends a mix of surgical spirits and olive oil, and advises all hotpress readers trying this at home to use avoid smoking or eating for at least three or four hours before performing.
Wasp Boy’s box of tricks also contains an array of nails and instruments that involve tongue and nipple weight-bearing. Mrs Wasp, his onstage assistant and real life girlfriend, later demonstrates the use of the two over-sized jugs in her ‘Woman with the World’s Strongest Tits’ trick. (I decide against challenging that title.)