00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor for Sussex Newspapers. Lovely
00:05 to speak to Max Fox from the show Cirque, The Greatest Show, which is coming to Crawley
00:10 among plenty of other places on a huge tour, more than 200 dates this year, but it's coming
00:15 to the whole thing Crawley on June the 22nd. Now Max, you were saying that this started
00:20 with your love of a fabulous film, a favourite of mine too, The Greatest Showman. What happened?
00:26 How did that show resonate with you so much? Yeah, so I mean, when the show came out in
00:33 2017, I went to the cinema to watch it and I was just obsessed from the get go.
00:38 How many times did you go? Oh my goodness, it must have been at least
00:45 six times that I went. That counts as obsession. And then what happened?
00:53 And then just kind of watching the show, it resonated a little bit to my life of being
00:57 a performer and, you know, having all these kind of ups and downs and trying to climb
01:03 that, trying to climb that trajectory. And I think that it just resonated to me that
01:10 way. And I thought, let's just, let's just try and put a show together that's got The
01:15 Greatest Showman in, which is more of a family based show. And once we started, we just realised
01:22 that, you know, absolutely anybody enjoys this show, no matter if they're old or young.
01:27 Yeah. And it sounds like it all did have to go a little bit on hold for a while because
01:31 it was unfortunate timing. You were getting ready with this show just before the pandemic
01:35 hit. What did you do during the pandemic? Did you have the chance to rethink things,
01:41 work on the show or did you just put it to one side?
01:44 Yeah, so we did have to take a hiatus, of course, like a lot of companies with our big
01:49 shows, there's obviously a lot of cost attributed with putting on a show such as this. So we
01:56 focused on some other things, we did some driving events during Covid. Yeah, came back
02:02 full throttle. We joined a national company called Entertainers, who have shows like Magic
02:10 of Motown, Last Love. And we co-produced a bigger version of this show, which is basically
02:18 circus it is today. So musical theatre and combining that with different circus acts.
02:23 It sounds a perfect combination. As you're saying, it's unique. No one's done this before,
02:27 have they?
02:28 That's right. Yeah. There's nothing like it on the market. So we feel, you know, we're
02:33 excited to be able to bring a little bit of a new concept that hasn't been shown in the
02:38 UK before.
02:39 Yeah. And great response from the audience, as you were saying.
02:43 Wow, absolutely. Incredible response. Yeah, we've been selling out in theatres up and
02:47 down the country. We're just continuing the tour and keeping it going. We're going into
02:53 24 as well.
02:55 Brilliant. And worth mentioning the fact you're not just the producer, you're the lead singer
03:00 as well, aren't you?
03:01 Yeah, so I've kind of got two roles in one. So I deal with everything beforehand and everything
03:08 on stage as well.
03:09 Buck stops with you. Fantastic. Really nice to speak to you. Good luck with the show and
03:15 all those dates up and down the country. Great to talk to you.
03:17 >> Thanks, Phil.
03:18 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Comments