The Sesame Street Circus Spectacular, Majura Park Shopping Centre (opposite Costco), until July 18. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

THE Sesame Street Circus Spectacular, going full-steam ahead with social distancing and masking under the Big Top at Majura Park, is predicated on the unlikely proposition that Elmo, Cookie Monster, Abby Cadabby, Bert and Ernie and Super Grover have the skills to become circus performers.

But who cares? In the 90-minute circus spectacular hosted by lush-voiced ringmaster Michael Keen, they match themselves – unsuccessfully in most cases – against thrilling performers from Argentina, Switzerland, Brazil, Morocco, Spain, Africa and Australia as they try to decide which kind of circus show person they would like to be.

Cookie Monster for instance, is only good at eating cookies, but Ernie and Bert reveal their capacities as clowns and Elmo is to the manner born as he becomes the weirdest ringmaster you ever saw.

At the outset, the larger-than-life Sesame Street characters dominate the stage with their familiar voices, recorded in New York especially for this Australia-devised production, so that it took us a little while to realise that this was essentially Silvers Circus at its best, lightly embellished with the colours of Sesame Street.

It’s not only loud and fast, but some of it is pretty scary, especially Dominik Gasser and Mewin Garcia on the Wheel of Steel and the Phoenix Riders, who bring the show to a conclusion with their daredevil motorcycle exploits.

Along the way, more thrills are provided by the virtuosic unicycle performer Yonnas Gebremedhin, tightrope walker Amanda Milleide, and ball-bouncing prodigy Lidiya Dawed.

I took the precaution of inviting a very small person and can attest to the wide-eyed excitement from beginning to end, especially at the antics of the naughtier “Wonder Dogs” of the Jratlow family, in what for some adults could be an uncomfortable sequence.

But that kind of correctness seemed far away from this amiable show. It’s big, it’s brassy, it’s noisy and – to the little ones at least – it’s Sesame Street.