Then it got bad connotations because of the performing animals issue and the old sawdust spectacle lost value But Archaos is

Then it got bad connotations because of the performing animals issue, and the old sawdust spectacle lost value But Archaos is re-inventing it. That's important because Archaos make shows for the whole world. It's a universal language."All the same, it seems that those conversant with the club scene will speak it most fluently "Rave parties are an inspiration," Carrara freely admits. "It's a world of hypnotic images and collective emotion." "It will appeal most strongly to the 16 to 22 generation," Evans concurs, "those who are used to rave culture and are easy with television images.

There are a lot of symbols, but you're not obliged to read them all Each person can see what he wants. There are times when a British person at Archaos might feel like a Frenchman at a game of cricket: you haven't the faintest idea what's going on, but that won't stop you enjoying the spectacle."We don't know what is right or wrong because our head is not ready to assimilate all this information," Carrara continues "It's a big surrealist painting in movement. The show opens with a squad of baton-wielding Robocop-types rounding up street people - at which point a red-coated newscaster on the screen blandly reassures us that "homelessness is now completely eradicated".But Carrara, resplendent in a goatee and New Romantic quiff, is adamant that "we don't have a message". Tucking into a slice of quiche (no sign of British beef at this particular Anglo-French summit), he goes on: "We're not journalists or philosophers. We're just artists." France is, after all, the country that invented the idea of "l'art pour l'art".

They expect extremes."What's it all about, then, this cavalcade of stunts that may have theatre- goers over the age of 30 reaching for the Nurofen? There is a running theme about the manipulation of information by Big Brother. It might be too much for some people, but that's what they expect from Archaos They expect a mad spectacle. Afterwards, she smiles more than a little nervously as she informs me: "They told me loads of stupid things before they started like, 'My carburettor isn't working very well.' I just stayed very, very still." Bad for the nerves, great for the show.Evans dismisses the suggestion that there is too much stage business; "too much" is not a concept the company is familiar with "The Archaos experience is overload," the producer asserts "People will come out buzzing It's a continuous wash. Game Over climaxes with a man staggering across the stage on fire in front of an immense mushroom cloud.

As an encore, a volunteer stands in the middle of the Globe of Death while the two petrolhead bikers buzz round on their chunky Honda and Suzuki 125s, narrowly missing each other and singeing the volunteer's hair. Stage-right, a loincloth-clad man suspended in a cage wails along to a beaty, Propaganda-esque backing track while a procession of wrestlers cavort along the screen. All the while, a huge screen at the back of the stage flashes up random images and phrases such as "orphans in Rwanda". It's one big multimedia, sensory overdose.In one typical tableau from the show at the air hangar-sized Palais des Sports in Paris last week, three trampolinists play basketball 30ft off the ground while a back-flipping woman and a unicyclist in a snorkel scuttle across stage.

Their latest show, Game Over, cost pounds 2m and looks a million dollars.If in previous incarnations Archaos have resembled Mad Max, they're now more Blade Runner This is the world's first Techno circus. Performers recruited from all over the world tightrope-walk, juggle, trick-cycle, fold themselves into contortions to make your eyes water and get up to all manner of kinky things with bondage gear and a trapeze. Far removed from the cosy circus image of spangles and sawdust, their shows conjure up all those words beginning with "D": dangerous, death-defying, downright deranged. The fact that the company is here at all must rank as one of their most death-defying stunts. At the 1991 Dublin Festival, high winds destroyed their circus-tent and after a prolonged legal dispute with the organisers, the company went into voluntary liquidation with debts no amount of buzzing chainsaws could cut through. Thanks to a French government grant (they apparently like Archaos's inventiveness - can you imagine Virginia Bottomley expressing such enthusiasm for Billy Smart's?) and the tenacity of its writers Guy Carrara and Pierrot Bidon and the producer Adrian Evans, the company has made a Lazarus-like comeback.