Circus Impossible: Summers Go Dark .... Parades Disband ... The Show Does Not Go On .... Death Stalks Vacant Midways .... Elsewhere, Art Concello Stirs Again ...

Once upon a glorious time in America, long long ago

And now ....

Hello Circus Vargas Friends! 

We hope this message finds you safe and above all healthy!

Please continue to show your support!

We wish everyone the best of health. Please stay safe. Stay home,  and we look forward to seeing you all happy & healthy under the big top in the very near future!

Welcome to –  for now -- the new normal.  To more of the above.  Welcome to more bad news, as if there was anything more to report. 

Circuses were already, pre-Corona, struggling, nearly gasping for each ticket sold,  each fragile new date gotten through.  Struggling to make “nut” before going nuts.  No doubt, what is a labor of love for people in various other arts who never make a dime (acting in community theater, for one), has already become a new old normal for circus folk.   Even the mighty Cirque du Soleil, a victim of its own insane grow-grow-grow mania, is now skirting the un-pretty edges of bankruptcy protection talk.

If there is to be an exception, it may have to be the Big Apple Circus, whose website contains but  this one meager message:

Big Apple Circus is not currently performing

due to COVID-19 safety and assembly precautions.

Have they already thrown in the towel?  On the surface of things, the show fostered a half-believable success at Lincoln Center  over the winter.  Come the new fall, when Corona may return, and with greater force, how can Big Apple talk enough New Yorkers into dawning masks and spatially crowding themselves, six feet apart, into a small and confining tent?

Salvation in the Great Outdoors?

 Circus Bella in an Oakland park

 

Over summer grass under a sky of natural blue, the circus will most likely return.  Easier to space patrons safely apart, easier to give them a more healthy-feeling atmosphere.  I have long argued for Big Apple letting go of Lincoln Center, and humbling itself back to the real city parks. Like Prospect.

The circus World Museum, ideally suited to present an outdoor show, yet is not going to be presenting any kind of a show at all, not this June.  Cancelled.  A bit in haste?   No, they are up against what all sporting events are up against: Having to severely limit the number of customers.  But sports teams can simultaneously broadcast on TV, and maybe break even until Corona is conquered. 

If it is true that a circus can actually not go broke by averaging a quarter of a house (Circus Vargas, maybe Carson & Barnes fit this notion), well then, they won't have to change a thing!  And by having to suppress attendance in publicity (Hurry! Hurry! Buy Now! Seats limited to a precious few!),  they might make themselves an in-demand attraction.

Am I dreaming? Will they even come back, ever?  No Baraboo parade.  No circus in June.  No Smirkus, either.  Virtually all the big and little tops are rolled up in canvas that may never be unrolled.

Goodbye and Thank You, Chuck Burnes

Death visits us too,  from Don Covington:  Gone now is long-time Circus Report columnist, one time Ringling clown, Chuck Burnes, who passed away on April 20 at the age of 89.  Chuck was a genuinely nice fellow who spent a lifetime luckily employed in many facets of show business –  co-manager of the Palace Theater, producer of stage shows for Disneyland, Great America, and Knotts’s Berry Farm, among others.  He appeared on television shows, toured around the world with Disney on Parade, and only ever once held a “normal job,” as lovingly recalled  by one of his two sons, Chip, and then for only a year and a half.

Chuck met his wife, Bambi under the big top, when she was a Ringling dancer and aerialist. Many years later, I got to meet them for dinner at a landmark eatery in Hollywood, where we chatted about their years with the Big Show.  They were there when the big tents folded for the last time.  And during work on my book,  Big Top Boss, they had me over to meet with a group of local circus fans and talk about its subject, John Ringling North.  Such good company.   

Reenter Art Concello's Greatest Show on Earth

Another sad passing is that of Mort Gamble, right, on January 29, co-author of a promising book in the works on Arthur Concello. He and co-author Maureen Brunsdale, herself a natural born  mover and shaker who heads up the impressively expanding Illinois State University circus archives and collections, were over half way through their manuscript at the time of Mort’s passing.  Maureen will continue on and see it through to publication. And in so doing, she  will be helping to restore and keep alive one of the most remarkable sagas in American circus management history. Concello, as you in-the-know know, was a virtual king behind the throne of John Ringling North, the two composing a Barnum & Bailey combo.  North, the unstinting showman of lavish and eclectic spectacle and world class acts; Art,  the nuts and bolts genius who made it all work -- and then some.

After the big top fell, in 1956, it was the flyer-turned-manager who single-handedly masterminded a long and tricky transition from big tops to hard tops.   A fact shamefully overlooked in too many so-called history books.  Even from Circus World Museum, in their latest newsletter, in which they pay tribute to Irvin Feld, a major donor, they write, “Feld brought the circus into indoor arenas.” No, he did not. 

Maureen has grown to marvel over the colorful Mr. Concello. “He was brilliant and wily, sagacious and tenacious, loyal and kind – in other words, complex! The cast of characters with whom he worked are an equally curious lot.” Boy, were they ever.

 From center ring to front office, where he became known as "Little Cesar"

Now, on her own, Maureen has typed her way up to and  through Art’s sudden resignation at the end of 1953, when he and North had a falling out over Art’s wanting to cut the show down in size.  He had already been experimenting with indoor dates.  The writing was on the wall.

“In 1950 alone, he was involved with bringing a carnival ride over to the US (the Rotor), buying then building a dog racing track in Havana, Cuba, creating the trailer park near the RBBB winter quarters, and working hard with Paramount men to bring the Greatest Show on Earth to life on the big screen.”

And what a perfect way to end this rather bleak posting. Thank you Art, for the part you played in that great great movie.  The more that things darken in the present. the more I thank God that at least we - and the world that comes after us – have and can find joy in the extraordinary visual evidence of how truly great the American circus was in its heyday.

In the meantime, ring-side seating, sir, for a party of  one ... or two? – and,  would that be with or without masks?

“No Human Contact Required” ... A Darkening Media Circus Shadows Us All

I ask myself: Were I still in the workplace, how would I cope?  I would be horrified. I would be shaken to the core, humbled — wondering if I too would lose my job, and then how would I make my way through a decimated landscape?  I think of all the people suddenly without a pay check,  especially those with children.

This more intimate fear came to me from an aerial view on the nightly news of long long, evenly spaced lines in Dallas – well dressed people waiting patiently for hours for a box of food — a box of food — bringing dry tears to my eyes.  Millions of proud, hard-working Ameriacans thrown into chaos and disarray. 

Perhaps the one single factor that joins the nation is a shared preoccupation with “the curve.” When will it really flatten and stay flat?  And when will it slide down?  What I see is a line near a crest, stubbornly refusing to cooperate.

I am defaulting into food by delivery.  Safeway came yesterday morning.  And for lunch, I finally tried Door Dash, and ordered a Turkey meal from Boston Market.  Delivery a clean efficient pleasure.

Nobody knows how long it will take for this lonely plague to pass,  or how long it may take for the nation to fully recover. (The roaring twenties followed the 19l8 Spanish flu epidemic)  The most promising  news is that scientists are starting to find that far more people than originally assumed have already had the virus. This means, thus, that a much much smaller percent of those who die from Corona may only equal the annual flu rate, at around 0.1%.  

But then, the media hysteria can’t let go, (gleefully?) reporting that Corona will likely return come fall, and with greater vengeance.  Can you see them licking their chops over every new dark detail spelling more of the same?  ABC’s David Muir, who has always struck me if to be  riding a galloping horse while breathlessly delivering the news, must be deliriously charged.

Strangely, right and left wing are joining forces, louder and louder, behind one issue: We won’t take it anymore!  Even here, in blue blue Oakland, I see  people out on the sidewalks not wearing the now mandated mask.  Particularly dog owners and their dogs.  Can you blame anyone for wanting to get back to normal and to work?  I can’t.  They, too, must be respected.

To better understand a degree of the fear driving the anger, yesterday while walking to Piedmont Grocery, which I skipped -- the lines too long -- I ambled up the avenue, crossed the street to pass a  comforting landmark founded in the 1970s, Gaylord’s,  A funky coffee house that caters to students and creative types, at easy prices.  I spent many nights there in younger years, either with pen and paper or laptop.  Hold on ...

Ominously Dark. Ominously Empty.  All the furniture gone. The inside, a gloomy shell of a great  place thriving only weeks ago.  It can’t be.  This can’t have happened!  Not a single sign in the window.  The walls blank.  Nothing there. For a time, they had been offering front of the store take out.  I called their number, and got a recording --- the voice of the owner, I assumed:
  .
Gaylord's has closed it doors. Thanks to everyone who has walked through the doors throughout the years.

These are the kind of small businesses having a hell of a time getting some of the money congress passed with fanfare, supposedly to help  them through.. Remember Mom & Pop, you DC scoundrels?  Too much, if not most, of your fake compassion ended up, in stead, in the coffers of regional and national chains.  So am I to take it that  “small” means anybody who is not a Facebook or a Google? 
  
Yes, I can better understand — and appreciate —  the rising anger of Americans aching for the status quo, demanding an end to shelter-in.  The lives of millions are at stake.  I now have a better idea of how it feels  to be regulated into a mind set of caution and restraint, and how it it can turn you afraid of your own shadow. How it might be under a totally different form of government. Have they gone to far? Or am I?

The still-functioning Piedmont Café, years ago good an old-fashioned American restaurant with wood booths, still —  without the wood separators —   offers the same sizzling fare --- bacon and eggs and toast leading the parade. Ironically, it’s been owned for many years by a lovely group of Vietnamese.  Sunday mornings can rock with crowds lined up for a sit down at this non-glamorous  but cozy space.  It bubbles.  And they are still hanging on, it would appear, for take out.  I went in this morning to take out a large croissant, and I handed the woman a bigger bill to keep, telling her how glad I was they were still there.  Her smile was bigger than her mask.

The loss of Gaylord's is a blow to Piedmont avenue, as would be the loss of the Piedmont Café and so many other homed-grown stores — another  blow to the binding social fabric of locally owned, served, understood, affirmed.   

No human contact required.

When a Broadway "Revival" Trashes the Revived: Oklahoma is Now Character-Revision Friendly to ADA, LGBTQ ... Small Crowds Cheer, the Masses Resist ...

Update, 5.28.30  The impression I lent of the 1998 Royal National Theater production of Oklahoma being true to the original 1943 stage show is somewhat misleading. Scroll to the end of this post for more. 

 Original cast, 1943

Along the Great White Way,  where directors love to re-conceive, they are at it again, this time messing around with the 1943 Rodgers & Hammerstein classic, Oklahoma!, which revolutionized musical theatre scripting and scoring.

But whether Dick and Oscar would delight in the extreme PC-driven casting, not just seen in last year’s revival of Oklahoma! at New York‘s Circle in the Square Theatre, but in other productions out there as well, is another matter.  To read the dazzling reviews for what transpired at Circle in the Square is to imagine a blockbuster darling charmed by full houses and settled in for a good long run. Alas, the Curly and Laurie trick did not last a year, and apparently limped into closing night. Boffo biz out of the gate gradually slumped into checkered patronage.   
                       
In a radical restaging by director Daniel Fish, the musical had been stripped down to the bare  “essentials," so noted the experts, shrinking the ballet to a bald dancer skittering like a horse across the stage;  toughening down the characters into a darker world of bizarre depth.  No chorus, little dancing, and a Jud Fry whose death is not an accident at the hands of of his own knife, but of the gun he gives Curly as a wedding gift – which backfires.  All of which culminates in a “quivering, feel-bad ending, and the tears,” in the words of The Atlantic’s reviewer Todd Purdum.

   Circle in the Square Theater, production, 2019

This one got the critics in neon, but it did not get the box office in gold for very long.  In six months the show was doing only so-so, and would close in January after 9 months on the boards – some thought it should have closed sooner.  It lost money and is now headed for the road, where the producers hope to recoup their loses. 

In his largely laudatory notice,  Purdum nonetheless observed a number of  “smiling faces”seen in the seats who were missing after intermission.  And yet, more “repelled” attendees walking out during the second half.

There is, to be sure, a small and growing segment of the ticket buying public that hungers for a more timely realism in step with changing sensibilities – a realism that shuns traditional marriage and now even the two genders.  They will not be ignored, and at the annual Tony Awards, where TV ratings continue to fall, their voices are echoed by Tony medalists taking time to lecture — or so I’ve heard.  Close by in the shadows, awaiting there turn, is  the LGBTQ crowd.  They fared far better in another more radical staging of Oklahoma!, in 2018, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, of all placdes. Held in Ashland (how apt a word), in that groveling departure championed by director Bill Rauch,  Curly and Laurey were lesbians, Aunt Eller a  transsexual; Will Parker and Ado Annie a gay couple,  while peddler Ali Hakim filled out the bisexual slot. Anybody out there still not accounted for?  Yes, apparently the powers at Happy Talk sanctioned this travesty. Have they no shame?

From the 1955 film: Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae
The dream ballet.

In a scathing review of the Daniel Fish staging, attack dog Rex Reed began, “It had to happen. The miserable fools who are hell bent on changing the theatre world by destroying timeless classics in a misguided effort to make them relevant, trendy, and politically correct (whatever that means) finally got around to screwing up Oklahoma!”

Reed blasted Fish for cheapening and vulgarizing the cowboy classic, none too impressed by such glaring incongruities as “the now handicapped Ado-Annie [who]  belts ‘I Can’t Say No’ in a wheelchair as a nod to disabled performers everywhere.” Another Reed rant: “Why is the most dramatic scene, when Curly encounters Jud in the smokehouse, staged in a complete blackout?” 

The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization in recent years has condoned if not encouraged such extreme make-overs — do you smell the sound of money?--  whatever can get the works of Dick and Oscar back on a marquee, whatever it takes to keep their names alive and the royalties rolling in — to the point of ignoble denigration. The ill-fated 2002 revival of Flower Drum Song (with a totally new book by David Henry Hwang pushing an anti-Communist agenda), left the critics hissing, and was history in five withering months. Not so, South Pacific, which, true to the original libretto — how revolutionary! —  enjoyed a two year run in revival. I saw it twice and would have gone again had I the chance.  Will they ever learn?

 Hugh Jackman in the London production, 1998

                                           
For my money, a movie of the 1998 London production of Oklahoma! at the Royal National Theatre, staring Hugh Jackman, is  by far the best staging I have ever seen of the show.  Credit director Trevor Nunn, who dug deeper into the script, but stayed a sane, level course. 

On the road, can Fish’s Oklahoma! make up for losses on Broadway?  It should do well in blue cities.  There are plenty of ticket buyers in the San Francisco Bay Area who might lap up its pandering to their social politics.  Our California mayor’s  wife is not “the first lady” but the “first partner.”  And that special person in your home, once known as wife or husband, soul mate, best friend, or dearly beloved  — is now, in the words of Bay Area-based doctor, Jen Gunter, op-editing for The New York Times,  “household sex partner.”  Batteries included?



In wrapping his review, Purdum asks,  “So how is Oklahoma! doing as it embarks on its quarter century as the model American musical?... Just fine.”

Evidently, for  Mr. Purdum,”just fine” does not include ticket sales (aka: populist appeal).  In order to lure profit-raising mobs to the  windows,  the producers may need tons more “first partners” and “household sex partners.”

Oh, what a beautiful orgy.

*****************************************************************

UPDATE:  5.28.2020:  My lending the impression that the 1998 British version by Trevor Nunn of Oklahoma! followed the original script with fidelity was not exactly right. I had based this on the misleading comments of the late Mary Rodgers and the Rodgers and Hammerstein office, offered in the Extras that came with the DVD. 

Turns out, according to an in-depth review of the production by John Heilpern in  the New York Observer,  that director Trevor Nunn  "added dialogue" from the original source, Green Grow the Lilacs, upon which Oscar Hammerstein II had adapted his libretto.  I had wondered why the film of the show is so long -- a good half hour longer than the 1943 production. So, out of curiosity,  I followed the script in book form, of the original 1943 production, as I listened to the movie of the Nunn staging. Virtually impossible at times. There are many revisions (or possibly new lines), some of them giving more attention to the character and menace of Jud Fry. In fact, Curly obsesses over him with Aunt Eller earlier in the Nunn staging,  before rather the after the song Kansas City.  Lines or sections of dialogue have ether been re-positioned or cut. Someday, somebody might make this a major project.

Face Masks ... Hit Show Grocery Stores ... Rotten Bananas in Demand ... My Fun House Gets a Reboot ... Ringling's Return Gets Ignored ...

Now I’m starting to feel guilty even going out for a walk. I’ve been using a turtle neck for a make-do face mask, I’d hate to be too tightly wrapped in those hospital things, fearing no escape. 

I’ll go to a nearby 7-11 to get the Saturday Wall Street Journal and grab some bananas  — if they have any. Yesterday, I wanted to buy all four left, a sorry lot, and got them for only a buck. No wonder;  By the time home, one had already turned thoroughly rotten on me.  Going to the Piedmont Grocery, the lines are so long, grocery shopping is the new waiting in line for tickets to Hamilton.

T. Paper is not an issue with me.  My nephew blames the national stamped on  “rear end paranoia.”  I predict a Broadway musical.

Inside, luckily I have things to do.  Such as renewing work on my model fun house, now that, at last, I’ve secured the Walking Charlie figurines I need for the moving platform above Laughing Sal

This project was begun  nearly two years ago.  It took about a year alone to find someone to create  Sal.  In desperation, I turned to working with and from a plastic figurine, to try shaping her into Sal.  You can see the barbaric surgery I subjected her to for arm repositioning.  And then I pasted a photo copy of the real Sal's face on her face.  Impressive?

 A nice lady in San Jose, doll house and miniatures enthusiast Ruth Heisch, had been following my quest, now and then e-mailing to see how I was doing.  And when she saw this monstrosity, out of pity or respect, she offered to dress Sal herself.  Bingo!  There was the magic breakthrough! Ruth gave Sal her hairdo and red shoes as well.

Yes, if the arms look short, it was NOT my surgery that did it.   (And, please, don't report me to the AMA)  The wavy card-stock you see: over it rides a pin attached to Sal, so that as the pin goes up and down, Sal moves forward and backward.  My nephew proclaimed it an "invention."

It took about another year to find somebody to make the Walking Charlies.  In this case, from Japan, puppeteer artist Nao Kobayashi. I had to keep pressing and pushing her through draft images to make them thinner – before sending them to an oven to bake.  I am pleased with the result, pleased enough, even though her Charlies are not  exactly as gaunt and lean as the real ones.  Below, I'm placing small thin platforms under their shoes, to make it easier to move them into place on the round turntable before securing.

While Sal rocks in half-deimented laughter back and forth, calmly above, the Charlies will move in a slow circle of  austere propriety. I never thought about this contrast in character until now.

And then there is  the Greatest Show on Earth.  Remember?  Although Kenneth Feld made known his plans to revitalize the show, you  will not learn a thing about it if you read  the insufferably elitist PC perfect Circus Talk, or go to the  CFA website. Not a word from either.

Shame on them both.  With Circus Talk, a house organ for the academic-based circus deconstruction industry, I can understand their revulsion over anything bearing the name  Ringling.  After all, didn’t they and their disdain for real circus  help fuel the campaign to run it off the road?  In a new issue, sent my way, as I am Covington Connected, they cover the flu influenza pandemic  of 1918, of how it affected “showbiz” Every venue is covered, except for circus.   We know that Ringling ended the season a bit early. 

As for the CFA: Knock Knock! Is anybody there? Does anybody care?  What do you think Kenneth Feld is to think when he can’t get even a rise from YOU?

APPALLING. 

Not only is circus dying, so too, apparently the fan base that would have once cheered such news.

Post script: I went to the 7-ll, and got some fresh bananas!  But no WSJ. Drats. I hope columnist Peggy Noonan, pending Corona test results, was okay.

Cirque du Soleil Near Bankruptcy ... World Circus Day Nixed ... Caballero Stranded in Parking Lot ..

This just in from Don Covington

(Reuters) - Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group is exploring debt restructuring options that include a potential bankruptcy filing, after it was forced to cancel shows because of the coronavirus outbreak, people familiar with the matter said. 

The famed Montreal-based circus company, largely known for its regular shows in Las Vegas venues, had to temporarily lay off most of its staff after social distancing measures put in place to prevent the spread of the virus nixed its performances. 

Cirque du Soleil is working with restructuring advisers to address a cash crunch and its roughly $900 million in debt, the sources said on Thursday. 

Creditors are also in talks with advisers as they prepare for possible negotiations with the company, the sources said. 

Cirque du Soleil has not yet decided how to address its strained finances, the sources cautioned, requesting anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. The company declined to comment. 

 Cirque du Soleil’s current woes have been exacerbated by debt taken on to fund a $1.5 billion deal in 2015 that resulted in private equity firm TPG acquiring a majority stake in the company. TPG has enlisted its own restructuring advisers to work through the company’s deteriorating finances, the sources said. The private equity firm declined to comment.

Moody’s Investors Service earlier this month cut Cirque du Soleil’s credit rating deep into junk territory and said there was a “high risk” the company would default on its debt. Canceled shows this year are expected to result in steep financial losses for the company “with limited prospects for a tenable capital structure thereafter,” the ratings firm said in a March 18 note.

In other news down the Covington chute: World Circus Day Cancelled, Circo Caballero Stranded in  a Parking Lot.

Walking the Streets of a Shut-Down Town ... Waiting for the Silence to Lift ....

As quiet out there as an iceberg. So like a Twilight Zone.
.

   

    “HAVE A GOOD SIX FEET!” I say to strangers amiably (spatially) passing by, and we exchange fast smiles. Mustn’t linger. It might jump the six feet with malice.  It has a mind of its own, and it can multiple in unexpected ways, we are told — something not so unlike an electronics startup turning itself into a giant of nightmare side affects.  Or the new property managers of the recently-sold apartment building in which I live,  who carry on like programed pre-robotic operatives off a space ship.  

   Have a good six feet – the new have a good day – in case you were taking it to mean something else!

    CONTRARY TO THE DRAMA of enforced isolation, we are not confined  24-7 to in-home prisons.  In fact, any of us are free tp go out for  walks, long as we keep our distance.   Though soon, this respite may be revoked.

    STRANGE: ON THE NEARBY streets of Piedmont, such as above,  which I walked yesterday  — love the contrasting architecture — there are never more than a few people whom I might pass, and it’s hardly any different now.  Maybe the sheltered in are working out between home theaters and drone ports.
  

    MOST OF LIFE has been ordered to a standstill, church services silenced, even roller coasters hushed   The opposite of when I was a wee thing during WWII, hearing sirens in the night (San Francisco’s fear of Japanese invasions that never arrived). By day, the Big Dipper roller coaster at Playland-at-the-Beach, just across the street, bolted with reckless force, clattering and screeching and  roaring on through the war years, sailors on leave or about to be sent off, and their make-do girlfriends, screaming their heads off in vague fearful abandon, not knowing what lay ahead – if anything.

    MY UNCLE SMITTY  managed the Dipper. My dad, seen here, right, and my uncles by night manned the grips.  In the surging distance across the Great Highway, blew the soft eternal moan of the Pacific Ocean, its incoming waves a never ending reminder of things eternal.  The war years were a boon to Whitney’s great sea side amusement spread.  Laughing Sal at the fun house laughed her woozy  head off, as if stuck in a marathon party.

    PEOPLE STILL WENT about their work, nothing stopped.  My Mom bought some of our groceries at a different store, where the wood shelves were plainer, and she handed the man coupons from a little book.  And after the war was over, I remember standing on a street curb downtown, where a great parade was passing by, and watching my father in his Coast Guard uniform marching proudly in it.  There was a great feeling of victory and relief in the air.

    HAVE A GOOD NETFLIX. Today, we have been ordered inside, and immersed more than ever in the electronics of bogus friendship and video game addiction., movies on demand, almost anything on demand.  Within moments, at your front door.  The United States of Amazon.

Besides which, we may also be spending more time facing each other in the flesh, how novel — driven to restart stalled relations — rekindling a natural caring for each other.  Real friends and real family come through, this I can vouch for.  So many best friends have passed on over time. And yet still, I am lucky.    

    SAID A LITTLE BOY to his mother, a New York psychoanalyst, “Mommy, I like coronavirus because I get to spend time with you.”

Might this kid be so starved for non-analytical affection, that he may one day himself seek the comfort of a paid-friend (psychoanalyst)? Perhaps his own mother, at special family rates?

    MIDWAYS IN MELTDOWN: The circus, remember it?, took yet another blow.  Ringling — planning to reenter sawdust land — “let go” 900 of its 1,200 workforce. Circus du Soleil laid off  95% of its  4000+ employees. This global giant was anyway facing serious set- backs — shows in rehearsal aborted, shows on the road failing to click.  How long before the public tires of what may come to  feel old and dated — the predictable ratio of increasingly fewer great circus acts to the ever more numbing Other Stuff?

    CARSON & BARNES, Circus Vargas, UniverSoul, all folding their tents for an indefinite stand still. Vargas hung in there till the end “Attendance at each performance will be capped at 250 which will allow spectator to maintain ample seating distance, limiting close proximity and contact between members of the audience.” You gotta admire their spirits.

    THE MOST HELLISH thing about this new virus, they tell us, is how devilishly contagions it is. And  when I shop, I have my scarf  over my mouth and nose. And I, though in the older age group at particular risk, yet have not one underlying medical condition. I am blessed with excellent health, and still vaguely afraid like everybody else.

    AND DOWN ON the beaches, here to Miami, carefree younger people who were romping it up in gleeful defiance, now being told the party is over.  They too, are, as it is turning out, at far greater risk than was originally projected.

Have a good new six feet, kids!

Ringling Rebounds: The Headline Thrills, But Details of "New" Greatest Show on Earth Confound ... Kenneth Feld Back Producing

The most famous circus name in the world, off the road now for three seasons, is gearing  to go back on the road, projected  to open as early as late 2021.

“We were so successful with the Monster Jam franchise,” said Kenneth Feld to Ernest Albrecht, “ that we have taken that model and will use it in designing what the new Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Baily Greatest show on Earth will be.”

Albrecht’s exclusive interview with Feld can be read  in full, in the current on-line issue of Spectacle. Kudos to Albrecht!

This sudden turn of events upends widespread popular belief that the circus was done and gone for good. Many of its animal-rights critics cheered the news, and so did many of those in major media.  As well, a growing consensus was reported on that circus itself is now a thing of the past.  Were Ringling to roar back, the “ageless delight” might surprise and astound the world. Lord knows, it is in dire need of a saving showman.

Turns out the Feld of Felds has not been idle these past years, but regularly  engaged in  talks with many creative people from far and wide,  over  how to reshape the circus for today — whatever can be defined as “today,” it changes so fast.

Why did Feld close the show in 2017?  He places  much of the blame on economic and logistic  hurdles — a claim that sounds a lot like what John Ringling Norh bemoaned  when he shut down the tents back in 1956 and moved the whole thing indoor.   The principle culprit: Trains.  Rail rates became  prohibitively expansive, and a late train into the next town could cost the show missed performances. 

What is so puzzling is that Feld kept his two 60-car monster trains on the tracks as long as he did. It never made sense to me.   He could have easily taken to the road. Perhaps this Feld, contrary to a cynical view of him  held by a certain sector of the circus world – heartless – fell under his own circus fan spell, enamored of sheer size, emotionally unable to let go?

"It is everything we do and always has been.  It was the foundational cornerstone that allowed us to do these other things."

Feld spoke of how the circus, once a vast variety show in three rings, today faces entertainments more focused on  particular items. I thought of our circus-theatre troupes, having reduced the lineup to acrobatics and story telling on a stage.  “Everyone has become a specialist instead of part of a bigger whole like the circus once was.”

“At one time, Ringling Bros. was all things to all people.  That has changed and consequently the way we look at things, and what we see now is that everything is more narrowly focused. “

Yes, and that was the dazzling essence of circus.

So, then, might the new Big Show become mostly an aerial thrill show?  Ground bound acrobatic display?  Modern-day petting zoo?   Since the monster trucks deliver big thrills and profits, all of which seems to have given Feld a new confidence in himself,  I’d vote for something closer to extreme sports than acro ballet behind masks.

But the idea of a franchise is what gives me the gravest pause over a comeback.  The Felds have tried twice to sell bits of circus  along these lines. And failed. They opened circus stores, patterned after Disney, marketing various circus souvenirs.  The public has always regarded circus as that thing that comes around maybe once a year. And two of the circus’s once-enduring, indeed defining  staples — clowns and animals – might be problematical store window displays.

Can Kenneth Feld reinvent  the circus sufficient to lure back a waning populist fan base back?

Had I the chance to ask him but one question,  this it would be:

“How, Mr. Feld, do you define circus?”

The 2017 closing gave him a chance  “to see where it stands in people’s minds. There is still, we feel, a demand for it, and we think we can make it into a larger franchise”.

I hope he is right.   These Felds, commercially speaking one of John Ringling North’s last great finds, had kept the great circus on the road for half a century.  They have millions if not billions to play with.  Most of all, I believe in the positive, that Kenny Fled is still possibly the smartest showman  over sawdust.  “It will emerge as the new Greatest show on Earth, in a very unique manner and fashion.”

Kenneth Feld has been circusing for most of his life.  He can be bold and brilliant. Can invent and make changes. And yes, can do screwy things too. And repeat them.  Truth is, however,  the Felds have never been great as innovators; their genius has resided in making hay and building up the already established properties of others s (Disney, Ringling, Marvel).

Perhaps this time it is a matter of finding a viable blueprint by others (no wonder, he has spoken to so  many people – good for him)  and ballyhooing it into glory.

This marks a tremendous potential turnaround in American circus history, and one hell of a subject to blog about.

Yes, American’s greatest circus is coming to town again!

Circus in Times of Quarantine: Ringling & Barnum Tents Closed Early, 1918 ... Not Going Dark Yet: Circus Vargas, Carson & Barnes, and UniverSoul ...

Update 3/18: Virtually all big stops appear shut down.  This includes UniverSoul, Vargas, Carson & Barnes, Circo Hermanos Vazquez.  Not sure about Cirque du Soliel's many shows.
All Vegas shows go dark, leaving hundreds of circus artists out of work.

Update 3/14, from Don Covington: UniverSoul has postponed its visits to Birmingham and New Orleans. Molla Shrine Circus Cancelled (Hanneford)


These are dark scary times, possibly over-reported  by hyper media coverage.  Even darker for our circuses still straggling to stay solvent, one season to the next.  Broadway has gone dark.  Sports arenas and stadiums are going dark. Schools are going on line, the classrooms dark. Everywhere you go, there is nobody.  Everywhere you look, you look more carefully.  I think I will buy a pair of gloves.

Yet to go dark are our big tops.  As of this moment, among the still trouping: Circus Vargas, promising customers a tent of 250 people max. Carson & Barnes is apparently still making Texas dates through March 29 in San Leon. $18 tops.  UniverSoul is still selling advance tickets.  Of course, things are changing by the minute. 

Back in 1918 during the Spanish influenza that claimed 20 million world wide, and over half a million in the states, Ringling was able to play most of the season, and then was forced to close early, although not that early, on October 8.  Likewise, their separate  Barnum & Bailey title.

By that time, I read in Jerry Apps excellent Ringlingville USA, “cities were canceling events, including parades, sporting events, and church services.  On a single day in October, 851 persons died in New York City.”  

By way of Don Covington, Circus Vargas posted this on its website:
 

"The health and safety of the public is of the utmost importance and priority. Circus Vargas is stringently complying with all State of California guidelines and recommendations concerning the health and well-being of our audience, artists and employees.

Attendance at each performance will be capped at 250 which will allow spectators to maintain ample seating distance, limiting close proximity and contact between members of the audience.

Extra sanitation stations will be provided and thorough cleaning and disinfecting of seats, railings and surfaces will be completed before and after every performance."

God bless them all.

In Other Rings: My Broadway Continues to Sell

Royalty statements from publishers  are at their most compelling when issued nearest to publication, when sales, if there are to be many, surge.  Gradually, they turn to token accounts as the years go by and sales naturally wane. 

But sometimes, sales can surprise you delightfully,  as when yesterday I received my semi-annual royalty report from McFarland & Company for Broadway Musicals: A Hundred Year History, which came out nearly 20 years ago. The book has continued to sell over the years, though the last half of last year gave me a big lift: Nearly 50 copies sold an no returns.  And they aren’t giving it away: $49.00 for both the paper and e-reader editions.  Used copies from other vendors are selling for from $35 to $146.

I have come to believe that if people really want a book, they will pay almost any price.  But you can’t give away a book that nobody much cares about. I have lived through both ends of the spectrum.

The creation of Broadway Musicals followed a decades long journey, begun the early 1990s, when I was collecting, listening to and grading original cast albums.  Since the year 2000 was conveniently up ahead, I began to see a possible book, focusing on cast albums through the century.  My working title became Broadway Scores: A Century of Musicals in Review.  McFarland would revise.

Landing a contract from McFarland marked a big turning point in my life. For now I had embarked on another subject away from the big tops.  This was when landing a contract — from a traditional publisher — was tantamount to landing in a Broadway show. You had a feeling of being discovered, of your work being validated by the pros back east --- that's where most of them were. What a thrill it was, seasons earlier,  to open a parcel from A.S. Barnes & Co. and discover, inside, my first book contract -- for Behind the Big Top!

Today, anybody can publish a book, which I think is a good thing, but no longer do I dare ask “and who is your publisher?”,  not wanting to broach a sensitive subject.  Oh, how more vital and tremendously exciting it was when an author had to find a real publisher. 

Broadway Musicals drew very good notices, though none from major media.  And not a single consumer review.

In one of my early royalty reports, came a stipend for some kind of a subsidiary sale.  It turned out, when I dug deeper, that one of my chapters, The Roads He Didn’t Take, about Stephen Sondheim, was reprinted in full in Gale’s annual Drama Criticism, an academic book that each year profiles the work of four or five major writers.  This I proudly regard as high validation.

Broadway Musicals comes third for me in sales, behind Behind the Big Top, and Big  Top Boss; John Ringling North and the Circus, which share a virtual tie. However, if you factor in discounted paperback copies, Big Top Boss is king, with nearly 4,000 copies sold.

So, once again, after maybe 10 years now, I will read my own Broadway Musicals. Of course, when you know others are reading you, it does make your own read more enjoyable.  I plead human.

Step Right Down to Half-a-Midway! ... Savor Circus History in Fantasy Fragments! ...Anonymous -- Don't Even Try

 
NINE CARS off the old Ringling train standing idle, nearly forgotten, in a place called Spring Hope (how apt) somewhere in the green of North Carolina, reports the Carolina Journal, revealing a fairly well kept secret. “Few people seemed to know it existed.”

BARABOO, ARE YOU reading? I am still seething (well, not exactly) over John Ringling North’s  not having willed at least one of the great Concello seats wagons to a museum of his choice.  How I would love to sit on one of those small chairs, and recall how not so comfortable it was while I basked in the enchantment of watching the Greatest Show on Earth in 1955.

SPRING HOPE'S Mayor Buddy Gwaltney, joking “We haven’t’ seen any elephants or giraffes running around ... monkeys swinging in the trees, but we’ve got our eyes open!”

HOLD THAT FEELING!   Me has an idea: Half a Midway hosting lost circus icons?  Stray dogs and monkeys, suspiciously talented?  Running around.  Swinging from trees.  The Ringling ghost train, parked imperially along its edge?  Admission free.  Donations on demand.  Odds and ends, props and ring curbs in poetic disarray.  Banners half raised, some full tilt. 

SCRATCHY OLD RECORDS blowing out hot Merle Evans music, like on hot summer days when Americans jammed the tents, laughed at looney clowns, thrilled to spangled daredevils, delighted over amazing animals ... Half a ring somewhere in the midst, now and then half an act in motion before half a dozen spectators. ... Harold Ronk’s thundering voice crisply crashing the air, then half-way fading away ...

AM I OVERLOOKING it by half?  I’d hoist half a tent, and in it host all of Billy Rose’s wonderful movie,  Jumbo. I just saw it the other night — can’t recall seeing it when it came out in 1962 –  I was out of the country then. What a fractured gem. A little too long and unable to end when it should   But so much to love, most of all, seeing agile circus performers flying and jumping, through the air, onto horses, in perfect freedom.

REMEMBER WHEN circus performers were just that, and not “actors” unencumbered, as they increasingly are, by heavy-handed role-playing direction, but wearing their own God-given faces?. Maybe this is what Paul Binder was referring to in affirming the joyful connection between circus performer and spectator..  And why Paul took off the masks that a visiting Cirque du Soleil director had put onto his performers..  The ring action in Jumbo harkens back to an era before the  ballet-theatre crowd began imprisoning acrobats into  PC-refined straight jackets of body movement purity and  “character arc” Before they were called “actors.”

IN JUMBO, came a showmanly young man who swooped through the air on a cloud swing, and took breathless dives with charismatic flair. And there was the reason, I remembered, why I had wanted to see this movie:  Billy Barton!  Among other free-spirited performers on the bill, the Poodles Hannefords rode furiously free, Barbette’s Aerialovelies fluttered their big wings overthe rings.  Pat Anthony and Victor Julian made cameos. The songs of Rodgers and Hart added melodic gold to the mix.. Jimmy Durante was Jimmy Durante.  This from a soft voice  in the beginning:

There was a circus in days of yore

There’ll be a circus forever more..

OKAY, PERFECT segue over or down to you, Feld of Felds: So are you the resurrection and the light?  The “forever more”?  What about that press release issued by one of your own  — check for the name Steve Yarios on your payroll---promising a return of Ringling?  A prank?  Half a trial balloon?  Are you yourself turning into half-a-showman?  I sense an irrational brain behind this, and I am reminded of another irrational brain at work when you blitzed the media over the first female ringmaster signed to blow your whistle, only, a few days later, to then announce the circus was closing for good, half a season in, the following May.

Rent the Tent, but not in Westbury

 SOMETIMES, too, on our vanishing midway, you’ll see half-thriving survivors, still putting out circus shows, such as the Big Apple Circus, promising a return to Lincoln Center in the fall of 2020.
Its strangely barren website lacks a listing of any company names. With an off season now lasting 8 months, the show offers piece-meal options: the big top for rent, “perfect for parties, concerts, photo shoots, and anything else you can dream up.”  And private show buyouts.  So far, they’ve landed a four-day, four-performance date on the stage-in-the-round of Westbury Theatre with what looks like half a show. In half a ring?  Actually, this looks like an ideal indoor venue -- while they're renting out their tent.

In these times, half a show may be more than good enough -- and something, maybe, of a smash hit on Half a Midway.

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 NOTE TO ANONYMOUS: FAREWELL

Comes the time to unwelcome you

Sure, you can be quite smart and knowing, but also profane and more.  One of you – or are all of you the same? —  despises Lilian Leitzel and revels in trashing her figure in the most vile manner.  You blast show owners whom, I assume, did you wrong.  Sour grapes is your middle name.  Some of you are barely veiled animal rights activists. I can spot you a mile away.  Some of you show a savvy grasp of things.  Altogether, I must say, you are a fairly cowardly lot. Collectively afraid of your own shadows?  And why?

Anonymous out there feels ghostly.  The Big A could be me. I am sure it is often the bloggers themselves, but I have never resorted to this pitiful exercise. Some of you have good things to say. Okay, show your face.  Cowardly is no longer an option, and if this midway must stand alone, so be it.  There is something about my decision to do this, and the meaning of social life itself, that feels  strangely philosophical. 

At the bottom feeder end of incoming "commentary," I have grown tired of your smirky put downs and your sneering digs at American circus companies.  And, yes, at me.  I would like to face my critics as they face me.  Then will you deserve the respect of my response.  Whomever you are, none of you will anymore be welcome here  – and don’t favor yourself by feeling smug and satisfied knowing that at least I will even read you. NO, I won’t even read you anymore.  In other words, I will not take the time to “review” what you have sent me before deciding whether to publish or send you to the dumpster.

How ironic, in a land that screams FREEDOM OF SPEECH morning noon and night, so many people hide behind the Big A   Even here, far from a political blog – a CIRCUS blog.  What in the world are you afraid of?   Put your name to your pen and I’ll more likely print you. I can take most of it.

You say you can only get in as Anonymous?  Then do this: STATE YOUR NAME at the beginning of your comment, such as  “from Joe Doe.” Even then, I will probably have to recognize your name in order to admit you through to my speakeasy.

Now, to face the silence. How much longer?   This I know:  Sometimes,  as has been said by others (and to think I once thought I said it first!) Nothing is better than something. Anyway, for those of you who do post comments behind your names, you will continue to be much appreciated.

Farewell, Anonymous.  Better luck ghosting elsewhere.  How about the Santa Anita race track?