A Little Apple Reception for the Big Apple Circus ... Tepid Reviews May Not Be Enough ... Can Nik and Grandma Fill the Seats?

Okay, here goes, I suppose.

Let’s face the music and still try dancing.  This morning in bed at the crack of dawn, I thought empty field in search of a circus, took to my budget tablet in hand and dug back into a current  topic on which, it seems, many of us are banking for the future of American Circus.

Were we over-banking?

I tried finding more reviews of the new for-profit Big Apple Circus.  I found a couple that read more like recycled press releases spun into bogus acclaim.  There is, front and center, the New York Times, which seems to be treating this circus like a patient on life support. But make no mistake, they’ve put out an operationally objective notice, the ambivalent reviewer granting enough hot words to build the fast-moving imagery (in streaming on-line quotes) of solid success. I said imagery, kids.

There are so few real -- or rigged -- reviews to draw from, that the BAC publicists have shrewdly made gold out of the Times review by quoting it in three bytes, the three separated by accolades, alleged or actual, from three other sources — Broadway Blog, one of the is-this-really-a-review? jobs; Time Out New York Kids, and The Wall Street Journal, except that there is no review to be found in  the WSJ, and I have dug deep.  If there were, I am sure that cyber courier Don Covington would have sent it out.

From the Times critic,  Alexis Solosky, came a subtly mixed notice that might be construed as damning them with faint praise.  She can bite, and she can sing.   “Unequivocally thrilling” she writes, of the Wallenda 7 high walk.  Those two words, as quoted on the BAC website, might pack a marketing wallop.  But, in the negative,  she’s not at all thrilled with Grandma, and she wonders if the 7-high does not fit the more intimate BAC style.  Overall, her notice leaves a feeling of something probably good enough but hardly great.    And for this, a Critics Pick from the Times?  Oh that’s right, the Grey Lady has BAC on life support.

It’s Ms. Solosky's summing up that wowed me, NOT

“Might as well take a bite.”

Might as well?

What are you trying to tell us?    You think the show is okay.  You think, if we have nothing better to do, then go?  That, in fact, is one of the meanings attached to those three lazy words.  I embarked on a major goggling blitz in an effort to avoid being accused of misquoting the quote.

In Oxford, the meaning of -- Hear Ye! -- might as well:  “Used to make an unenthusiastic suggestion”

That’s how it felt.  Mind you, I have no idea how this show would affect me.   But there are a few items that feel anti-climactic.  One is the quad, which is being reported in some quarters as if it regularly occurs. In fact, it is only attempted, and only at the night shows. And, far as I know, Ammed Tuniziani hardly ever makes it.  He did at least once.  And how stale the air feels around  this overblown hype.  We’ve already been there.  Done that.  Celebrated a milestone.  Were this to be the first quad ever, YES, do give it a ballyhoo. But it is not.  That legendary feat was accomplished when mid-air marvel Miguel Vazquez spun his way into circus history, and kept the magic spinning for over ten years.   Since then, now and then we hear the news “so and so just did it!” And then, nothing more.

Okay, is there any customer feedback on the internet?  Any Yelps?   I googled consumer reviews, only to find those leaving their hissing comments at the end of the Times review.  An avalanche of anger, just what the circus needs, right?  Either from  animal activists wanting every last dog out of the ring, or from the learned in circus affairs, pissed off at Ms. Solosky for what she dared to write, accusing her of being unqualified to appraise.   Oh, how easy it is to rile a circus fan or professional, they are so not accustomed to this. 

I wondered about Ms. Solosky, and so I dug.  And now I am  wondering if the critics of the critic would also have blasted her when she gave a warmly embracing  review to Big Apple Circus’s Grand Tour, two years back?  The upbeat notice filled me with good feelings, making me wish I had taken the tour.  Solosky’s  take on the new show leaves me unconvinced.

There is, I should fairly add, another review that seems like it could be real.  In an on-line website that nobody seems to know much about called Theatrepizzazz.com: “Fabulous acts.” But it's not quoted  on the BAC website.  Strikes me as much more credible than the one in Broadway blog.

I was finally able to  pull up the advance WSJ coverage, which came out before the show opened.  It considers a difficult road ahead for the new owners if they do go out on tour.  They claim to have  “locked” up dates in Atlanta, Baltimore and ‘DC in 2018.

A big problem, smartly advances Wayne McCary, is that outside of New York, Big Apple Circus is little known. And boy, how little known I could see, when, a few years back, a performance of the show, given before swaths of empty seats, was live-streamed into dozens of movie houses nation wide. In the multiplex where I sat, sat seven others.  In a PA house where he sat, wrote a fan, there was only one other person besides himself.  And in a small Utah town, when my brother and his wife took a chance on the show, at my suggestion, they were the only ones in the house! 
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If the good flying doctor and his Sarasota partners-in-faith can bring off this revival and hit the road with gusto, I can think of another, much bigger circus name also deserving of a second act.  Can you name it?   Only a suggestion, you understand.

Might as well dream.