Lights Out for Ageless Delights? In the Shadows of Death, Two Billionaire Ex-Circus Kings Are Stirring to Reclaim Thrones

Was there ever a season in world history as starved for live entertainment as ours? Corona, the villain whose ultimate destruction is yet to be fully known, has toppled big tops far and wide. Almost daily, down the Covington Chute come links to yet more news of more companies going into limbo.   One of the latest is Oregon-based Wenatchee Youth Circus, founded by Paul Pugh. For the first time in its sixty eight years, the show will not go on.

Even Blondie and Dogwood have finally caught up with the sheltered-in crowd.

From tiny to towering, they are all shut down, and we all know why, for we too have been  shut down.  And now we are venturing back into a risky new world, tired of putting our lives on hold, tired of the conflicting dictates of mixed voices.

A few flickering candles keep a few rings alive in video-land. The Big Kid Circus, run by a Bulgarian couple, gives off a wonderful buzz, the action down to earth, its warm and winning ringmistress, Brit-born Olympia —  she of a circus family going back many generations — shining with simple down-home enthusiasm. Now under lock-down, Big Kid’s  current offering, Cirque de Cuba, is performing online. Some 25 Cubans charmingly dominate a cast of 35, whipping up a snappy pulse with cha-cha dancing and lively spirits. How gracefully they mix with zippy old-fashioned circus fun  Not sure about admission charges. I’d pay a reasonable price to see the show here in my Corona cave.  

Giants can tumble, too.  The plight of Cirque du Sloeil, a victim of vanishing fortunes, offers staggering evidence of incredibly reckless over-expansion.  Many years in the making. Circus du Soleil is so much in debt (nearly a billion) as to make me wonder if they follow the U.S.national debt model for endless borrowing — or printing money on demand.  After repeated bail-outs from beguiled investors in exotic locations, the company now faces possible bankruptcy protection.  95% of nearly 5,000 employees were laid off.  Payments to  “dozens of show creations” were stopped.  Gabriel Dube-Dupuis, a creative director for 23 years, told the New York Times that they owe him “tens of thousands of dollars.

Moody's gave Cirque a credit rating of near junk status.

To their rescue, maybe,  comes the founder himself, Cirque King Guy Lalibterte,  who told Radio Canada that he wants to buy back the show, that he has investors lined up. He spoke of a “relaunch,” without giving specifics.   “We think we’re able to bring back the sacred fire in there.”  The Canadian government is on his side, hoping the company can re-anchor in Quebec.

Can he do it?  His biggest challenge may be a waning customer base suffering from Cirque fatigue. Meaning too much boring nonsense  (lame allusions to theater) and not enough great action (as in great circus)  Critics of the show complained to a New York Times reporter of its ground-breaking novelties having fallen prey to “facile story lines and kitsch spectacle, like acrobats in frog costumes.”  That is an understatement.  I have posted enough on the subject.           

Fate may be setting the stage for an even more spectacular comeback, and one more viable, for billionaire Kenneth Feld, who shut down Ringling  in 2017, is now planning to bring it back, albeit in a new form.  He projected a debut in late 2020, all of this in his own words to Spectacle Magazine on-line.  Are we to believe him?  I have never known of so momentous an announcement meeting with such wide-spread silence.  I can’t find a single other item out there drawing on or matching the Spectacle interview, not even on the CFA website’s running list of news topics.

Kenneth Feld may turn out to have picked the perfect time for a Ringling renaissance. By then, we may have a vaccine.  And by then, Americans will be so starved for live entertainment – and circus is as live as it gets — that they might storm the ticket counters to gratefully re-embrace (stand aside, PETA) circus as as once they did. The Feld of  Felds has a cracking good chance to bring off possibly the greatest comeback coup in circus — heck, in entertainment – history.  Best of all, he does not rely on the Federal Reserve for funding.  He will need to focus on what has given circus its timeless appeal. 

Memo to Montreal, in good faith and high regards, to the Cirque King:  Frog costumes for acrobats? A rest, maybe?  Masks? Lock them up. Better yet, throw them away. You might be forced to discover in yourself yet more creativity — and fire.