Circus Ronaldo consists of David Ronaldo and Danny Ronaldo, Belgian mimes and comedians. In La Cucina dell’Arte, David & Danny are head chef and assistant at a pizzeria, and they present an evening’s power struggle between the polished and bossy David, and the simple, good-hearted yet sneaky Danny.

A man and a woman from the audience are invited to the pizzeria and the two attempt to make a pizza for them. This involves numerous of broken plates, juggling roundels of pizza dough, plate-spinning, and lots of gags. The show reached its peak when Danny tried to set eight plates spinning on long rods sticking up from the pizzeria table, while David expected him to take down orders for pizza that he was getting from the audience, all backed up by frantic acordion music. Danny tried to get the man from the audience to help him with the plates, but the man had obviously seen enough crashing plates for one evening and preferred taking down the pizza orders instead. He was a natural for the role, getting magnificently confused when he couldn’t hear what David was shouting, jumping away when plates crashed behind him, and eyeing plates spinning above him with great nervousness.

The stage after the show

It was a simple story with simple jokes, but so well presented that the audience was roaring with laughter, with tears in our eyes. They were good mimes/comedians/actors, very expressive, ridiculous without going too far. They also had a very relaxed attitude about audience contact – not just the people who were invited on stage but also others they “conversed” with. Mistakes in tomato juggling meant tomatoes flying towards the audience (luckily not too ripe tomatoes); likewise torn pizza dough that Danny wants to hide from David. When the show was over, the stage was a royal mess of flour, crashed plates, lumps of pizza dough and used matches.

Lots of great pictures are available via the agents of Circus Ronaldo.