DARLING — Pivot Point Circus Spiegeltent at the SpiegelGardens, Brighton Fringe

There is something irresistible about a Regency ball descending into the Spiegeltent. The mirrored walls, the warm amber light, the faint whiff of sawdust and sequins, the venue does half the work before a single performer has taken to the air. And when Pivot Point Circus arrive, they make good use of what that room offers.

Darling wears its Bridgerton influences openly, and why not; the 'ton is currently very much in fashion. A colourful court assembles beneath a watchful queen (Xélia Froidevaux ) love is sought, status is performed, and propriety, as it always must, begins to crack at the seams. It is a premise brimming with queer potential: what, after all, is the history of high society if not a long elaborate performance of compulsory heterosexuality, with desire routed underground and expressed in glances, in touch, in the body's own insistent language? Circus, of all art forms, is perfectly placed to excavate that tension.

Where Darling is most triumphant is precisely there, in the body. This is an almost entirely female ensemble of recent graduates from the National Centre for Circus Arts, and their physical intelligence is the evening's true text. The hula hoop (Ellie Beale) is a genuine highlight: a cheeky, brilliantly conceived riff on Regency propriety and the hoops women were quite literally required to wear. A duo on the Lyra makes the hoop becomes something else entirely, a tool of subversion, of pleasure, of athletic authority.

The chain work, delivered by Amelia Laughlin in a stunning pink costume was muscular power and precision, bringing a completely different register, less decorative, more forceful, the silk-and-lace aesthetic suddenly giving way to something rawer and more insistent. It's a wonderful tonal shift, and the audience, who are warm and engaged throughout, respond accordingly. The aerial silks and lyra work from Emma Moon across the evening are consistently accomplished with plenty of wow factor, some seriously impressive flying strap work from Willow Hippley drawing gasps from the audience, but each act finding its own personality within the shared visual language of the production.

Tomas Elian Briones Rojas, the sole male performer, brings a sweet foppish charm as the company's romantic foil, a softly drawn Latin lover and gentle fool, but he's got the dance moves and flips. The same-sex coding that runs through the ensemble dynamics, meanwhile, is legible enough, the intimacy between the women, the rivalry that tips into something warmer, but it remains, perhaps frustratingly for a Brighton Fringe audience primed for it, mostly unengaged with by the performers themselves. They play it straight, in every sense. For a show whose entire dramatic architecture is built on concealed desires and the performance of social expectation, a little more conscious queering of that subtext would not go amiss. Chrys Shipley's swagger before their rope work may have leant into that, but the vigorous twists and falls soon, rightly, overpower that narrative.

The production is self-directed, which speaks to the collective's ambition and confidence, and much of it lands beautifully. The rousing classical music choices give the acts room to breathe and resist the temptation to chase easy pop-culture shorthand, the regency costumes adding some geometric texture and rococo glamour to the acrobatics. The Spiegeltent's own vintage glamour layers over everything like a second costume. If there is a structural note to offer, it is that the narrative connective tissue occasionally struggles to hold the room between acts. Head mic's would lift the dynamic, allowing character and comedy to land with the same force as the acrobatics.

But these are refinements, not objections. Darling is the work of a young company with style, genuine physical virtuosity, and distinctive voice. The eyes, ultimately, always return to the performers, and that is exactly where they should be.

Darling plays the Spiegeltent at the SpiegelGardens on 19 and 20 May. Tickets from £10.

More info or to book via the Fringe website: