I once saw an animal circus in Spain, where barely noticeably amongst the flames and razzmatazz, a patchy-coated bison shed one solitary tear. Reacting similarly to a state of enclosure are NoFit State, a fixture of contemporary circus in the UK who have begun to experiment in cirque de la promenade their last venture a site-specific piece at the Eden project. Tonight, for the London International Mime Festival and under the direction of circus novice Mladen Materic of Théâtre Tattoo and National Theatre Wales, they deliver wings of thwarted desire in the form of Mundo Parelelo, ostensibly a story about mortals and angels, but so at odds with theatrical reason that the premise of tonight – locking circus into the black box and having it respond to the stage – begins to look a cruel conceit: a doomed strongman on a short run, struggling under the weight of theatre’s baggage.

With circus of this kind, antagonist as it is to the mega-show of the big cirques, you expect to do without a degree of spectacle. Certainly tonight is not about eliciting gasps, to impose a gut-emotional arc on the night, one greedy for an ascending curve of heart-stopping wow, would be like pumping a patient on the verge of flatlining. Actions far too small for the vast Queen Elizabeth Hall, such as a roly poly or some balls spinning expertly in a hand, mix with low-impact stunts such as low wire routines, some starkly unelaborate aerial set pieces, and the repeated climbing of an unsupported ladder. When, in the second act, the ladder makes its third or fourth appearance and turning to the side gives us its profile, a manoeuvre that represents a major development in the evening’s technical variety, we are deliberately steered towards other considerations.  What they are remain opaque.  A short scene where the performers pile-up into multi-limbed creatures was reminiscent of the work of Momix, but without the visual gravity or cunning. A small love story, involving balls too small to see, was little more than a fragment of twee heterosexual cliche, and for a jarring minute the performers wielded light sticks in a perfunctory light show.

Because if gasps are tonight to be considered cheap flatulence against the perfumed clouds or scouring emotional-aesthetic winds that theatre proper might deliver, then still we remain unruffled.  The circus aesthetic is hyped to create a sense of performing the circus, but rather than a window we get a confusing dead-end.  One character (although performer is the better noun, as we get no handle on subjective presence) is dressed as Chun Li from Streetfighter, the ringmaster is betailed and top-hatted with that cartoon Dickensian gypsy air that is customary, another is dressed in a cardigan and plus fours, gummily pratfalling like Tin Tin’s confused grandad.  These are rendered a disparate mob by the absence of any discernible dramaturgy.  Who is angelic and who mortal is never clear, nor is the dimension of their actions or interactions.  More painfully the physicality of the actor’s is rough-hewn, and far from the sinuous delights of L’Immédiat or even moreso Du Goudron et des Plumes (whose use of a platform could not be more interesting or superior) of last year’s festival, the stage here suddenly throws a sharp and less-thank-kind focus onto every rudimentary elbow.

Props are brought on. A low wire threaded through a soaring metal “S” like a double skipping rope is handled by its operators with brute force and measure of unsteadiness, before being swiftly abandoned.  A possibly ingenious-on-paper isometric affair of struts provides another series of low wires.  Here the night’s lone note of elegance, a slow parade on the wire by a pleasingly pear-shaped lady is moving is not wholly languid, but as the contraption clunks down a scant metre or so on various axes under her hesitant weight, we are hit not for the first time by a sense of underwhelm. The only prop that seemed related to the space, and wouldn’t have worked just as well in a big-top was an awkward contrivance: a hooking-over a section of the back curtains to produce a square arch, which was then reeled haltingly back and forth to reveal scenes behind it. A clown pulls some bottles out of one another on a table, the curtain squeaks desultorily onward, a performer lies stabbed. On the floor a few dolls houses with lit windows languish, creating no effect to speak of.  Far too small to discern anyway they became redolent of this thwarted experiment: wanting for imagination and finesse, its energy lost in the big space, isolated and bemusingly fragmentary.