The Caesar Twins seem to have their hearts set on wooing the British public. They made a splash at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe during its past two seasons. They also featured on the 2005 Royal Variety Show. Now, for a limited time, they have landed in the West End.
One of the appealing things about this extraordinarily photogenic and focused Polish duo is that you actually believe they are performing from their hearts as well as with their perfectly trim, toned bodies.
Pablo is the baby, born five minutes after Pierre in 1980. These smiling, sweet-natured peroxide blond beauties are each other’s spitting images and climbing gyms. Some of their gracefully controlled routines possess a sculptural sensuality, and others a puckish sense of humour.
Their feats of strength are impressive. One handstands on the other’s head, the latter lowering himself down on to the floor and rising back up again with nary a wobble. Occasionally they achieve an eerie beauty as when, facing opposite directions, one balances upside-down on the other’s shoulders.
At times the Caesars exude a naive, almost schoolboy charm, and yet aspects of their theatrical packaging are clumsy and resistible.
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Occupying a stratum of safe commercial entertainment, the show falls between stools. It could either play much cleaner, crisper and classier, or else the tone could loosen up into something more louche and libidinous.
A PlayStation episode casting the pair as martial arts opponents fell flat and, with its video backdrop, looked junky besides. Afterwards an air mattress was dragged out, filling half the stage and allowing the boys to indulge in flips, bounces and an incredibly speedy ring of somersaults.
The twins showed what sexy pranksters they are by luring onstage a woman from the front row and, unbeknown to her, continually trading places as they romanced her. But a solo on bungee cords, utilising a gyroscopic belt, failed to lift off into imaginative metaphorical realms. The finale, with the Caesars turning into human goldfish inside a vast transparent bowl, was strangely underwhelming and the contribution of their friends, a musician and a vocalising aerialist, negligible. But the boys themselves are good value.
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