Spectacular street show from Royal de Luxe features a forty-two ton mechanical elephant, a barrel-shaped wooden rocket, and a sixteen-foot little girl.

People who were in London a few weeks ago reported an extraordinary spectacle around Waterloo Square.

First, a enormous rocket -- shaped like a wooden barrel -- crashed hard in the square, making a smoky, rubbly mess of the pavement underneath.

The next day, out came a little girl -- except it's hard to call anyone "little" when she's literally as big as a house. She eased herself out, looked around, blinked, and eventually (not before urinating on the street, though!) encountered a forty-ton, forty-foot-high elephant, sent by the Sultan to travel through time to find her. The amiable elephant spent Friday evening exploring St. James's, bringing traffic to a standstill. On Saturday he headed to Trafalgar Square, and eventually hoisted the little girl up onto his trunk -- and, accompanied by carnival music and teams of red-jacketted puppeteers, took her to the Horse Guards Parade.

On Friday she went back to her home planet. An eyewitness reported: "At the end, they lowered her into her spaceship, then with the crane lowered the pointy top over her. The elephant blew steam into a hole in the side. The music grew louder and louder, and steam and smoke started rising from the bottom of the ship, thick and white. The music peaked as the steam grew thick enough to hide the ship, and then silence.

Then, as the smoke blew away, the crane lifted the top of the ship away--the Wooden Girl was gone.

The elephant lowered his trunk and his head, and closed his eyes. The operators climbed down, and into an open top double decker. They stood, looking down at the crowd, and drove away from Horse Guard Parade.

As I left, I noticed that the Elephant was breathing, almost snoring--not dead or off, just sleeping!"

The spectacle is "The Sultan's Elephant," based on a story by Jules Verne. It's the work of Royal de Luxe, a French group that's been doing increasingly extravagant street theatre for thirty years. Royal de Luxe's other productions have included The Giant Who Fell From the Sky, shown in Barcelona and Calais.

If you missed the show in London earlier this month, or in Nantes or Amiens last year, don't worry --it'll reappear in Antwerp July 6-9 2006, in Calais in late September, and in Le Havre at the end of October.

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