Sledgehammer Showmanship on Parade: The Ringmaster Screams, The Music Drones On, and Circus Vargas Sinks to a New Mediocre

Review
Circus Vargas -- Bonjour Paris
Seen at Corte Madera, CA, August 12, 1 pm
Tickets: $19 - $75 

Note: Website photos of the acts do not give names or bios.

What a difference a few critical seasons can make.   The Circus Vargas you first spot this year, with a state of the art tent, can hold its own in design with the best of them. From a distance it’s a wow.  Up close, you might be  charmed by the sight of comfy couch chairs on the midway. The prelude air sparkles.  

 

But all things in life do not always unfold to favor first impressions, right?  This will be a doubly challenging review to write. So those who prefer their reviews sunny side up are encouraged to go sunny side down and out of here,  while you have the chance.  I do not bow to sacred cows.  

I have never, in trying to form a notice, been so compelled to weigh talent against “production values” (announcing, music, set, costumes and props, direction and pacing, etc) First, to talent. On balance overall, I’d place it in a respectable  B- range.  Good enough for an average audience, certainly for crowds newer to the circus, and especially the young  too young to have much to compare it with.  .

For my eyes, the most gripping moment came on the rolla-bolla, our maniac for the afternoon stacking seven blocks on a roller and then proceeding to place himself at the top. The crowd went wild.  We agree, crowd.  The performer’s hyper jittery nerves, real or not, intensified audience fears.  

I also liked the breezy, ingratiating fellow who works with an upright ladder, and balances large objects. Maybe on the basic side, but refreshing in its delivery.  It’s an act I would welcome seeing again.

Circus Vargas, which has long excluded animals, now seems to be moving out of the aerial sphere as well.  There is virtually little of memorable consequence in the air (only two strap acts, one in each half, well rendered), and practically no clowns.  Yes, there are two guys who make funny faces and funny sounds.  

 Safety first in the modern tent

On the ground, there’s an ambitious teeterboard troupe, a bit of a work in progress.Biggest item is a  woman in harness who is catapulted to form only a three-high. Usually, it’s a four stack that gets wired.  But now, the lifelines, it seems, are becoming more and more an accepted element in the “new circus.” In fact, our protected diva advances the acceptance of them by being lowered to the ground twice with the aid of her safety wire, thus giving it the respect of a co-participant.  She did execute a nifty feat, landing between two under-standers in a splits position.  

What else?  A young juggler offered a wide variety of manipulations, if only so many of them had not turned messy.     

There is plenty of dancing, purpose being, I took it, to flesh out a flimsy theme about the show going to Paris. An accordion player serenades us, and the cast whoops  it up line kicking in a winning can-can.

 

Second half packs a little more power, what with the standard double wheel and then the cage of three spinning motorcycles.  A more exciting turn had the bikers out of the cage and rip-rolling up and over a ramp to the other side.

Okay, ready or not, here I go.  Production values: They should enhance and elevate the action.  Here they nearly smother it.  This show looked and sounded very different from those I have seen several seasons before, and so I  wondered if there had been a regime change at the top.  Turns out, no, Katya Arata Quiroga and Nelson Quiroga,still own it.  How strange that they, in their heyday top-flight trapeze artists, should now give us a largely empty shell above.

But like it or not, there is a regime change of sorts, an overbearing regime named Jonathan Lee Iverson.  You will know him as a Ringling ringmaster. Here he also serves as performance director.  At the start of his career on the Ringling show, Iverson cut an appealing figure, and I saw great promise and gave him high marks.  But then he was restrained. Repeat: Restrained. Over the years, he has only grown more annoying, especially inside a small tent compared the huge arenas he played.  During set up for the motorcycle cage, I wondered whether a long buzzing noise I heard was part of the operation — or Iverson himself going for a new record in vowel extension.    

This advanced version of  Iverson conveys a belligerent undertone of egocentric control.  Indeed, he has a way of sucking the oxygen out of the tent with his proloooooooooooooooooooonged introductions, which he can't seem to get enough of.   To be fair, the man’s verbal blasts are not without precedent, however questionable.  I can think of at least another blowhard —  the abundantly large one who bellowed away for Carson & Barnes, as if believing that the louder and longer he screamed, the greater would be his  impact. Iverson did excel surprisingly and  magnificently in going operatic in a baritone outburst — a second career in the making?  Or mere lip syncing?

Enough. As for the vaguely dreary recorded music, how best to describe it? In a word, MO-NOT-O- NOUS  Together, ringmaster and score form an oppressive barrier  between  artist and audience.

But ... the crowds the day I attended – I’d guess they filled about half the seats —  were wildly alive, and lapped up most of everything.  Circus Vargas has had 15 shows to do in the small upscale town of Corte Madera, in rich Marin County.  They must be doing something right -- although, and I could be wrong, there seemed to be noticeably fewer people in the seats after intermission.
           
I know I won’t be returning until there is yet another regime change.   

 Early exit?

 END RINGERS Trooping in Turmoil?  Website does not name the photos.  A total of 3 ringmasters appear in two images, one seen above  Did I miss him? I only saw Iverson in the show.   There's a foot juggling act I would love to have seen  -- woman works large lotus leaf objects. She did not appear. What goes over there? ....  Music that Sounds Like Music: There is music out there that can have strong multi-generational appeal, and the '80s stand out. I bring this up because, while on the way, my Lyft driver, a young guy from Brazil who is training to be an airline pilot like his father and uncle,  had some ‘80s sounds coming from out of his system. We had fun talking up the era.  Beware the Vargas Discount Coupon.I came across a large Vargas ad in the East Bay Times, which read: Save 15% on your tickets!  Use code 15AD23"  I tried using it at the ticket window, only to be curtly rebuffed: “We don’t do those here.” Oh, really? How unlike the previous regime ... They are next headed to Petaluma up the road. I wanted to post more photos, but the website disallows saving copies. 

RINGLING FOREVER: Rethinking '56: Costumes by Vertes Inject Erotica into Circus; Floats Dead on Arrival

When this photo first grabbed me by the eyeballs, I could finally understand why critics of John Ringling North had been accusing him of staging a "night club circus." The costume was designed by French artist Marcel Vertes, hired by North to color-coat the 1956 show. Not just colorize, but evidently sex it up a lot; you need only study some of the Vertes sketches, which Life Magazine published, to spot erotic shadings in various states of fleshy titillation. The dancer, above, appeared in the hot-off-the-moment pachyderm production shaker, "Ringling Rock N' Roll."


The performance rarely captured the pagan abandon that simmers in the above rendering of a floridly sensual procession. More often, from visuals left behind, '56 costumes lent a rather delicate, lovely, and un-guady air to the spartan festivities, crimped, one can only surmise, by a circus hard-pressed for money to get itself back on the road, up to Madison Square Garden. At their best, the Vertes designs lent a graceful air of impressionistic elegance. A number of the critics were seriously impressed, as we shall see in a future post.




Above, the artist's rendering of a tulip float for the spec. Below, the actual float itself, as executed apparently without even a death row reprieve. That this photo made it onto page 14 of the program magazine, if nothing else tells us how brain dead the Ringling PR department was that sad chaotic season; indeed, North should have fired the magazine editor and all press flacks responsible for allowing this atrociously unflattering visual into print.


This and other barren floats were featured in the spec, "Say It With Cement" (excuse me, I meant to say "Say it With Flowers"). The parade that year was an utter embarrassment, for which, whom to blame? Costume and float executor Max Weldy, himself a former designer who seems sometimes to have derived perverse pleasure in sabotaging the work of rivals? Or simply a glaring lack of funds? Some troupers remembered with amusement a J.C. Penny label attached to dresses worn by spec showgirls.


This float strikes me, comparing it to everything I've seen in stills and footage, as remarkably lush and lovely.

Actually, John Ringling North's signing Vertes was a theoretically smart move, for it generated considerable press coverage in New York and helped give the show a fresh new look.


My quintessential moment with North, years later: During the one interview he granted me, I asked him if, looking back over the seasons in general, he had any artistic regrets. "I could not get Salvador Dalí to design the show." The famed surrealist wanted too much money.

That Life magazine chose to feature the painterly design sketches of Vertes rather than photographs of the actual costumes they inspired may tell us as much as we need to know.

Here is a Life photo, four months later, of the last parade in Pittsburgh. In black and white, Weldy held his own. Vertes, maybe not.

Above three photos, in color, by Sverre Braathen, The Milner, ISU.

First published 8.31.10

Sunday Morning from Out of the Past: And You Wonder, What Are They Thinking? ...

Rumblings down at the runs, waiting on a circus train from nowhere... Once upon a season they were all in the barn by now -- red wagons in need of fresh red paint, ring curbs for new stars, jacks and stringers for repair ... Now the elephants wait for cues that may never come ... To be or not to be? To perform or not to perform?

Down at the runs, you wonder what Barbara Byrd is thinking. Strange how it should all come down to this -- from a man to a woman, from William Coup adding rings in 1872 to Barbara Byrd being the last to keep three of them in motion under the same canvas. Is she too thinking a single circle, or does she hear the ghost of her dad Dory telling her to stay the American course? ... Down in Florida, what is on Johnny Pugh’s mind? Time to retire? Or time to go for broke in a daring blaze, to reinvest and bring back the band?

A thousand miles down a spur track to a humble dream, a new circus is being formed in somebody’s ambitious mind, and maybe that circus has a crusty old midway to offer the jaded patron in search of the past ... Strange gaudy banner lines in flagrant violation of PC standards ...

... What might Paul Binder be thinking when he notes how long it’s been since he presented either a pachyderm or a flyer? Big Apple opens in the fall when circuses once closed, and closes come summer ... Once upon a season, the white tops slept during winter, awoke in time for early spring and were out in the sunshine chasing after the money that harvests put into farmer’s pockets....

Down by the old ice house where the train once arrived, you can almost hear the sound of a faint whistle up the rails and remember when they clanged into town under the cover of a damp morning mist. When the world was barely born and then suddenly appeared before your eyes under pennants galloping in the wind. And you wonder what Renee Storey is plotting when she considers how PETA gives her employer, Cole Bros. Circus, more publicity and might not be such a bad thing after all? What Kenneth Feld is thinking when he continues pitching the Big Cage act to customers who who evidently still want their circus on the wild side ...

And out in San Francisco, where patrons prefer Perrier over lemonade, ballet over big top, even the nuovo rich are growing restless for a taste of reality. They are taking in a very different version of Cirque du Soleil at the moment, a version called Kooza, and some of them are realizing what they have been missing for more than a season.

“This production feels like a heart-pumping cocaine binge for thrill addicts,” proclaims Nathaniel Eaton in the ultra-liberal S.F. Weekly, coming honest on how “ho hum” he found the three Cirque shows that came before.

Animals? Weren’t they supposed to all be gone by now, asks the Savvy Insider, elsewhere at work on routing and promotions, taking time out to answer his own question. No, says he, animals acts did not go away as planned. In Europe, they “have instead been reinvented” ... And you think how wonderfully ironic, that those uppity Brit Lords, sure of their agenda, paid for a study to prove that elephants are really mistreated at the circus —- a study they proved the very opposite! And down at the runs waiting for a train to pull in, you wonder what the public is thinking now...

Over road maps and sponsor contracts, watching videos of acrobats and jugglers and plotting another season, you wonder what John Ringling North II is thinking ...Bigger and better —- or the same?

Even more fun to ponder is what S.F. Cow Palace big shots, without a circus for two years, may be thinking? ... And you can almost hear a distant train whistle somewhere out there on real rails or in the back of your mind, racing forward with a world of spangled wonders to capture a waffling public restlessly ready to be thrilled by something either very new or very old ... And optimistically, you enjoy remember being told over and over again that history repeats itself ...

Down at the runs, Byrd and Pugh, Feld and Binder and Ringling North and Judkins, and yes, Laliberte the Great reinventing himself, are watching and waiting, too. Maybe wondering what we are thinking

First posted December 7, 2007.

Sunday Morning Out of the Past: Copeland & Combs Land Paris Spotlight ... Garden Bros. Lands "F" Ratting from BBB ... El Jacko's Pedophilia Paradise Exposed ... Kelly Miller Captivates in Video Tease

Remember the Copeland & Combs who once filled our days with Kelly Miller posting?  That was Steve, the tell-all one.  I have marveled over how they went totally under cover, their once thriving blog nearly now in the dirt and sadly fading away.  I walk the dirt of desertion these days.

Whatever happened?  My best guess:  Somebody told Steve, in order to protect their precarious career (we are talking "circus" career), that he had better stay clear of all social media ...  WELL, poking around in news bits from Baraboo (did I spell that right?) I learned they played --- are you ready? --- Cirque d"Hiver (yes, I know I did not spell that right)  last winter ... Mighty impressive!  Glad they are still cobbling together pay dates there and here ...  

Under  punishing North Carolina spotlights, Garden Bros, Circus ranked by the Grenville News "the worst circus." And ain't that a shocker! Like a veteran cockroach in stolen spangles, this creepy caravan just keeps slugging along.  Compared to which, maybe King-Cole, now in its second season (the first having "wrapped" in a week or two) is A OK? I'm hoping Circus Report puts out something on this show before CR goes under come December ...

So many icons and landmarks falling ...  Yes, I know there is a "Renaissance"  of circus arts underway in this country.  And are you referring to artsy stage shows?  Summer youth circuses?  Acro-dance troupes?  Pardon my asking.

Kelly Miller's website shows a performance lineup identical to last year's,  and on a video tease they have produced, the over all sheen and talent range makes me wish I could see this one   Might they be the new Ringling-Barnum?  ... Or would that be Big Apple, the latter a strange animal, apparently straining to find hospitable cities in which to play ... 

Michael Jackson's Neverland, the subject of a brilliantly believable doc now airing on HBO, should land a slew of awards ... A quietly escalating drama of how the singer skillfully charmed and seduced little boys into believing themselves to be in full-blow relationships with their freaky idol.  Blame it on the music, and oh what music it was.   I remember once joking with friends, was that a fake detachable nose he was wearing?   How much was real?...

What people will do, even with their kids the bait, to taste fame and fortune and Hollywood money ... So many love notes floating back and forth, and in clear sight, between Michael and his "lover" (of the year), and Mommy and Daddy did not realize what was going on in the bedroom, often far away from theirs?  The voices of two of the singer's subjects, clear and calm, recounting how wonderful and not coercive it seemed, and that makes the story both challenging and even more bizarre.  Except that, Mr. J was not after long-term love, which marks him as just another very average, horny predator jumping from one xxx to another ... 

First part ends with both boys having been pushed to the sidelines while younger darlings are charmed into the Neverland seduction compound... Can't wait for Part 2, to see what happened to these two fellows as they grew up to face a life without the man who swept them out of their diapers. He, at 34-ish in a private ceremony,  getting married to his latest one true love -- all of seven years old, and ominously close to seven-year-itch rejection ...Oh, whatever happened to monogamous pedophilia?

I'm outta here.  

 

3.19.19 - Ring Stoppers