ZOPPE'S LATEST PARTY A FALTERING AFFAIR: Mediocre Lineup and Superfluous Clowning Miss the Magic Mark.

Circus Review
Zoppe Family Circus
Redwood City, CA November 8
$31 tops at ringside

 

A clown for all rings: Giovanni at the opening number

How to review a circus so less than what it was the last time you saw it?  Had I lived through a two-season long Zoppe golden age?

Full disclosure: I am not a fan of audience participation.   The Zoppe audience laps it up like honey. Maybe because it has special appeal to the kiddies. Go figure, while I lay down some kind of a review.  So, let's start with some feel-good highlights, and work our way down. Feel free to leave at any time.  

Top of the pack, a fellow working from an upright ladder, leans way way  back, lets go and lands on a small  a pad below that springs him somersaulting across the ring.  Daring. Dynamic.  Dashing.   Audience ate it up.

Two robust Cossack trick riders meet our expectations well enough, and a dog act delights in the key of sufficient.  A young juggler takes the ring with such force and authority, it’s a big let down to see so many items dropped.  And my favorite for style and flash —  a fellow working a web more like a single trapeze. Wish he could have given us more.

Impressive new feature: A live three piece band, yes, LIVE,  that wraps the show in festive scoring, maybe a decimal too high. I heard a lyrical passage that calls to mind Fellini.  Kudos to these salty windjammers!

Okay, as for all the rest: In-between the acts, and sometime during them, Giovanni, a gifted creative clown, yet seems always to be there, unable to let go. Always hovering.  And since he is the owner, there is nobody to reign him in from hovering — or invading.

For example, wanting to grab hold of a cloud swing too high to reach,  he takes his sweet time combing the audience for a suitable understander. Takes a heavy set fellow down into the ring, and proceeds to climb aboard the man’s bent backside so that, finally, he can reach up and grab the swing. And show off.  And I am all the while wondering if both have life insurance.  Unless the man was a plant, I find the whole thing highly questionable.  And I can't remember a big giggle payoff, as he has produced in the past. Pointless?

 

           

Critically Missing: Three figures who gave last year’s charmer rare sheen and a Big Heart: Giovanni’s two sons, Julien and Ilario, both missing in action.  Ilario does manage to sneak in at the very end, out of a trunk, but minus clown face, costumed to demonstrate the skills of an equilibrist. All at the age of around four or five.  

The third figure most missed: The mystically wordless  ringmaster, Patrick McGuire, who gave this show such class.  In to replace him, a fellow in black who refers to himself as the manager, and whose sole function is is to eject the ever intrusive Giovanni. They perform a scripted exchange that strains to be funny. 

Too much padding.  Intermission hypes photo ops with one of the dogs and face painting..  As before, you  will not find a single photo of any of them on the website.  I hadn’t the will to try digging beyond.   

Zoppe is catering to adults wishing to take their kids to a real circus.  But the slim crowds suggest either the market – or the show — is limited. Tent, they say, seats 500. There once were two rows around the ring curb. Now, only one.  Of the last three Zoppes I’ve taken in, I’d guess they drew around on average two hundred plus customers. 

They have a special place in the American circus scene. May they endure. All circuses have their ups and downs.  Maybe the best thing about Zoppe is their ability to change.  You can go not exactly knowing what to expect. I will hope that little Ilario comes to his senses and rejoins clown alley.    

2 - ½ stars.  To see my two last reviews of Zoppe, enter "Zoppe" in the search box above  left.

SNIFFINIG OUT CIRCUS A LA CARTE IN BITS AND BOTS: ARE YOU READY FOR VIRTUAL?

  Cirque Italia Water Circus 

A recent article in Bandwagon declaring 2024 “A Year of Revival for the American Circus,” works overtime to include anything that incorporates circus acts, either at the center, or in the shadows of experimental. The writer, Rodney A. Huey, is remarkably charitable in admitting into his feel-good survey practically anything that drops or alludes to the C word at the ballyhoo — and even some, like 7 Fingers, that technically don’t. But then, neither does New Ringlng.  

In olden golden days gone by when circus was circus, big tops awesome and little tops charming joined the April parade of gilded caravans down sawdust trails, throwing up fresh white canvas, sending giddy banners galloping gaily into  the wind. Red wagons convened onto open fields where canvas was spread, laced up, and raised skyward. And a magic city was born.  A city of amazing acrobats and animals, rowdy clowns and blazing spectacle.  Bring it back, you know who!

 Cirque Ma'Ceo

 

Being there in the middle of it all was a unique sensation.  We went in guilt-free, no pickets at the marque shaming what we were about to be thrilled by, and came out hopelessly addicted to the likes of Francis Brunn, the Cristianis, La Norma ...  

 Cirque Paranormal promises vampires and creepy clowns

And once upon a better season, they all gave you a circus, period, and you know exactly what I am talking about    At one time in this hyper competitive nation, even the smallest shows laid claim to three rings.  

Now today, a show may rig its aerial trappings from the wings of a theater, spot the props in public parks or on cruise ships, even at concert halls, purpose being to draw some kind of a crowd.  These specialized adventures are what some call boutique circuses.

Le Grand Cirque

 

Seven Fingers Passagers 

Full menu circus sill thrives in  Russia and parts of Europe.  Italy still loves the animals, and the Monte Carlo Circus Festival still celebrates the best of them with Gold Clowns.  In the  UK, all but two or three shows are now all-human. A few circuses stateside (Culpepper, Hanneford,  Loomis) still dare to feature exotics.  Some take a middle road with domestics, like  Zoppe Family Circus, which does not draw protesters to its collaboration with dogs and horses.  

 Cirque Ma'Ceo

Among the animal-free  shows, some can’t resist parading the banned in the safer, more cowardly form of costumed performers ---or bots.  Ringling’s insertion of a small robotic, mutt, conveys a promising insecurity at the top.

Here is where the Bandwagon story rumbles down the runs and then, instead of heading for an open field, chases a wide-ranging array of amusements (cerebral to carnal) that use circus primarily as a draw. Huey  brings on  the word “fusion’ in order to grant these entities the making of a grand revival. But the word feels like a strained euphemism in order to cast a wider net for triumphal image-building.    

In fact, “circus” as we have known it, was invented in an act of fusion, when London horse rider  Philip Astley added rope walkers, clowns and acrobats to his equestrian exhibitions in an open field.

Cirque Kalabante

Huey places the new Ringling acrobatic show at the center of it all, reporting on its “resounding success” (his source, Feld Entertainment) The article was published before New Ringling shut down to spend the greater part of a year planning its next edition. Given the near impossibility of our ever knowing what sort of business Ringling actually did, there is the rather bleak image of angry Yelp Reviews, averaging 1.5 stars, and of Reddit threads revealing skimpy crowds, i.e. "Recent tour stops seem to be struggling to get people in the door, especially for evening shows."  I find this plausible given a call I made to  the 20,000 seat Crypto.Com arena in L.A, where the show played, and was told that the average attendance had been between six and eight thousand per show. Like all the fan magazines, in this instance, Bandwagon can’t bring itself to function beyond a press release.

In the meantime, what I mostly see is circus a la Carte, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  It gives you more options to consider.  Hard core circus fans prove themselves to be, at least in public posturing and feel-good reviews, quite willing to gratefully embrace what still parades as a circus

It could be worse, I suppose.  The insane rise of AI will not doubt one day bring about the first  virtual circus show. Are you ready? Don’t throw away your tapes and movies just yet. And stay tuned to dog-loving America’s Got Talent on TV. First episodes usually push circus acts. Wonder why?  
 

 Old Ringing, 2017

SUNDAY MORNING NOW: A Challenging New Day at the Greatest Show on Earth: Hyperactive Set Design, Feeble Direction Suck the Life out of an Ageless Delight

 from 7.15.24

Acrobatic Circus Review
Ringling Bros / The Greatest Show on Earth
On You Tube at Columbus, OH, 8 months ago

Preface. I had imagined being lyfted out to the Oakland  Coliseum, right up to the arena.  No, I would have been dropped off at a gate on the edge of a parking lot along one of the town’s deadliest streets. No thank you.

Once, again, as with Vargas last year, I am left muddled in a dizzy dichotomy between the acts and the production. So, let us take them one at a time:
        
THE ACTS

On balance, they are a sturdy, sufficiently accomplished  lot — when not hooked to lifelines, falling into nets, or grabbing hold of rigging between tricks. To my (jaded?) eyes, only a precious few rang my WOW bell.   Most of the action favors the customary staples: teeterboard, webs,  hand balancing, contortion,  juggling, flying trapeze, high wire, double wheel, Rola-bola, and the human canon.

The show lifts off now and then, and I wished there could have been more of the show-stopping mastery produced by two absolutely terrific risley acrobats. A+ in my book.  In fact, for me, the highlight of the program. 

Other notable high points include two criss-crossiing trapeze acts, which marks a refreshing interlude from the norm.  And there are two double wheels instead of one, offering a tad more tingle to what is regularly expected. These riders worked overtime.

In addition to the staples, show offers gaucho dancing and young bike-riding daredevils up and down ramps. 

At the top: America’s own Wesley Williams, who has a talent for being human, something this show could use a lot more of, scores big time with his sky high ride on a 35-foot high unicycle. I felt a genuine thrill even though he was life-lined; without which, a crash landing over the audience could spell catastrophe.  His act has been split into parts performed at intervals. A shame, but the show benefits from his ingratiating recurring presence.  Indeed, what is lacking the most in this strange antiseptic comeback is a personality.

Where was the robot dog? I might have missed him during Wesley's turn. The you Tube I saw appeared to contain the entire show from start to finish.

A couple of kind of charming clowns take up little space inconsequentially.

THE PRODUCTION:

As for Ringling’s over the top set – stay with me here --- I saw three hills (or platforms), roughly spaced as in the old three-ring layout. On and around them, the performers tend to look smaller and diminished, like ants lost in a maze of flashing light patterns that grab our attention, in effect dissipating the action. In effect, disrespecting the artist. Whatever was Kenneth Feld thinking?  Does he have so little faith in his talent pool which he claims to be world class? 

On the  outer two ant hills of Ringling, other acts endeavor  to snare a little attention, one of them, a group jump-roping troupe that may go four-high.  I would love to have seen more of them.

Spectacle?  Dancers and hand clappers circle the arena periodically in an effort to rouse the audience, which can feel somewhat hollow and obligatory. 

A trend not worthy of the “Greatest show”–  The insidious invasion of mechanics are of no help here. These tell-tale safety wires can render the user a lazier, less skilled artist, no longer needing to rely on exacting technique in order to avoid a plunge. Thus, they now can get away with being sloppier, less tautly disciplined.  The performance suffers.

Music: An amorphous recorded soundscape with a cold  heavy beat left me in a fog.  Totally unmemorable.  This, from the Greatest Show on Earth?  This from a billionaire  circus owner?  

At the  very end of the performance, Wesley alone, in street clothes, comes running across the set -- a touching human image closing out a cold, impersonal enterprise.

All of the above notwithstanding, the crowd was large and responsive. For all we know, the show may be cleaning up, in which case look for more of the same to continue.  But why do I still see widespread hostility in Yelp Reviews, still  averaging 1-1/2 stars?  (Vargas is drawing 4).

Let me close with a recent Yelper from Brian, Willow Grove, PA, May 29:

 "Save your money. The American circus is officially dead. There is no Ringmaster. There are no clowns. There is no pageantry. There is no National Anthem. You cannot buy a pennant. There are no programs sold. They won't even say: "May All Your Days Be Circus Days." They lamely announce: "May All Your Days Be Ringling Days." This costs hundreds of dollars a ticket?"

 My Rating:

Acts B+

Production values: D

May all your days be better than this one.

First published 7.14.24