Show Me Some Dogs, and I'll Call You a Circus; Big Apple, Welcome Back!

 

Show's next Lincoln Center annual promises a more down-to-earth party.  Best of all, I see doggies on the show's new poster. Do you?  Are the current owners, whomever they are, daring to be a touch more authentic again? Golly molly, wonder of wonders, it looks like a circus is coming!  Best of all, it still calls itself a circus!

Pardon my unintended sarcasm, but I am looking to circus to stave off the end of human civilization, as more and more, the digital world is competing to replace it with a nightmare alternate universe composed of what are called called "bots."  I finally got around to googling out what those ugly four letters spell.  Oh, you already know?  ROBOTS. I am always, it seems, a few upgrades behind the latest gizmo.   More and more, these clever invaders are making more humans feel less connected, needed, valued. More and more, we are coming closer to the inevitable showdown between us and them.  I'd love to see a sci-fi flick in which the bot bastards go to war with each other and blow themselves up into impotent digital dinosaurs imploding over and onto each other. Crash and collapse! 

Over in San Franfreako, here in the State of Insanity across the polluted bay, the new driver-less taxis are getting hissed at and attacked, smashed and left feeble, possibly by the Uber and Lyft drivers they are designed to render obsolete.  How sorry I feel for those drivers.  When I talk to them, I can feel the hurt in their voices, the void in their hearts.  Many of them value what they are doing.  And I recall Chinese premiere, Xie issuing an order to a few regions: If humans can do what your robots are doing, hire the humans. "Hire humans."  How revolutionary.  A preview of what may have to come?

Which, for me, makes real circus as opposed to the human and bots variety, a welcome retreat to the real. 

The mere sight of some jumpy dogs getting to perform with humans tells me that, gradually, the public may come to see what has been lost under our tents in the name of progress.  And then maybe a horse act, and then, maybe some riders, and then, maybe a pig down a slide. One step backward at a time.

There are still animals, plenty of them, in the Russian shows, and in many European shows too.  And over here, among a few heroic hold outs, there is the Zoppe Family.  As I have previously noted, the Zoppes play to a more sophisticated clientele down in the Redwood city main library parking lot, in the the heart of Silicon Valley. 

Whatever happened to Jenny Vidbel? She deserves an apologetic encore. Bring back her magical menagerie, and let the circus be circus again! 

Keep That Day Job! Hits Number #1 in Amazon New Performing Arts Titles

 

 7.17.24

“A joyful pursuit! ... Readers will be delighted and surprised. Not just an excellent, inspirational recommendation for struggling artists, but perfect fodder for book club discussions ... Thoroughly engrossing.” -- Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review.

JUST PUBLISHED!

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  https://amzn.to/3XVKLwB  

Or direct from the publisher:  bearmanormedia. com

7.9.24

WATER for ELEPHANTS BUCKET RUNING DRY? More Empty Seats Spell Trouble ... Rival Stage Versions of The Greatest Showman, So Very Barnumesque ... Gravity Circus Ditches Globe of Death ...

Update 8.14.24: Water patronage slip continues, down to 75.67%.  Show announces national tour starting in the fall of 2025.  Can they reverse declining attendance?

 Update: 8.8.24  Water for Elephants played to the smallest capacity (79.9%) of all shows on Broadway,  the only one in the 70% range.  

 *** Revised, 7.30.24   

 TODAY'S WONDERMENTS  begin with the  84% of seats being filled at  Water for the Elephants on Broadway.  Number looks good to me, but in fact it looms near the bottom of an official  tracking website. Only one or two shows sink lower.  Most  musicals are well in the 90% range, and many are packing them in  – just to give you a jolt of perspective.  70%? Virtually none.  One of the leads already has announced exiting in September. The end of summer could spell less patronage. They might hang on long enough to claim legitimacy for a national tour.

     FOREVER BARNUM:  Rival adaptations of The Greatest Showman are forming on both sides of the Pond, or are they? Over Here, the Mickey Mouse musicals division of Disney still has in the works, or so reported  Stage Spy in West End Theater last October, a stage adaptation of the Hugh Jackman film.  Rumors suggested an opening anywhere as far out as 2027.  But hold your animal crackers!

      OVER THERE,  for a fact, the same score is being featured in Come Alive!, an extravaganza  “inspired” by the Jackman film.  This one kept the songs, but ditched the largely fictional script for a new model.  And it’s slated to open under a 700-seat tent at the Empress museum in Earls Court of London on September 23. ***Disney, which owns 20th Century Fox, maker of the film , appears to be peripherally involved, having "sanctioned" the production. Which begs the question: Are they still at work on their own adaptation?  All suckers, to the front of the line.  How so true did this feel to the darker history of  P.T. renting out use of his name simultaneously to rival big tops.

     OUT, DAMN GLOBE OF DEATH!  From Italy to  the UK comes creatively rich Gravity Circus.   As noted by Douglas McPherson in his review of the show on on his blog, Circus Mania, “Circus thrives in the new.” At its best, surely it does.  At the top  Gravity’s roster of the new, they’ve 86d that tired old Globe of Death carny stunt.  Taking a cue, I’d guess, from a similar arch of flying motorcyclists on Circus Extreme, the riders here soar over “a ring full of dancers and jugglers passing the central fountain while fire erupts in rising balls of flame.” Whew!   Greyhound:  Have you a through bus to there?

      END RINGERS: Speaking of Barnum, latest issue of  Bandwagon delivers a Big Show in  Part 1 of Chris Berry’s spectacular story, “There Used 5o Be a Circus Here: Madison Square Garden."  Lavishly illustrated yarn is centered around P.T. and other major tenting tycoons who played a role.  I can’t wait for Berry to gets to the later years when I was around, assuming he does.

     ROYALLY SPEAKING:  Also In the same Bandwagon issue, James Royal is profiled by Lane Talbuet for his 10-year career in the UK, ringmastering, producing. and promoting.  He has a way of partnering with names in the Gold class. He joined with Philip and Carol Gandley to create the telemarketed Circus Britannia – The Circus With a Purpose. A few years later, they brought out Circus Star. I’m waiting to see what Jim has to say about his days in partnership with John Ringling North II

7.28.24.

What the Circus Can Teach Broadway, Oh Really?

Updated: 6.20.24

Yes, an odd question -- in the form of a headline rolling down the  Covington chute a while back.  Questioned was posed in a Theater Mania interview with the show’s director, Jessica Stone.  So, have we here a big hit, I wondered.  So big that others may want to learn from it?  Even, dare I say, imitate it?   

The very assertion in the headline -- Jessica Stone on what the circus can teach Broadway ---  may have raised hackles among Broadway pros,  taken aback by the gall in its being raised.  Upon closer examination, seems the question was launched by the article’s writer, Zachary Stewart, in his asking Stone,  "What is something that you’ve learned a tremendous deal about in this process?"  Here’s the best I can extract from Stone’s underwhelming reply:
    
 “I’ve learned so much about rigging. .... You need to know that the person holding their arms out is going to catch you, and that can only be built through play, community , and trust.  That’s something I will always take with me.”
            
How to rig?  How to be sure you know your partner well enough to trust them?

But can Water teach Broadway how to compose better scores?  Better choreography?  Better scripting?

There is a fundamental difference between circus and theater. The one is mainly all about acrobatics and the daring-do of performers.  The other, about the human condition. And they don’t easily mix in equal measure.   The hit musical Barnum dwelled more in the human, with a socko score and a good enough story. Nobody talked up its token acts. If fact, I can’t remember any other than Jim Dale as Barnum walking a low wire.  Water’s acclaimed circus artistry -- cited by some as the reason to go -- may only add to the impression of a feeble story flailing about between – not songs, but  acts.

In fact, with the possible exception of Billy Rose's Jumbo, this may be the first musical to share the stage with top-line circus acts -- assuming  that they are that good.

Now with not a single Tony to its name, can Water for Elephants yet bring off a dark-horse victory and prove its haters wrong – half the notices were scathing.  Or will it’s luster fade away with the passing of another Tony Season?.  Something about the good notices it did draw (a critics pick from the Times) and glowing customer gush (possibly shilled) gives me a feeling it just might surprise them all.  But I wouldn’t bet on it.  In Theatre Mania's most recent weekly box office report, some shows played to 90% or more capacity.  Water was not one on them. 

Next on Midway Times Square?   Disney has been workshopping a musical based on the Hugh Jackman movie, The Greatest Showman. They might have better luck. The movie has a score that dazzles, especially younger ears, and circus performing is incidental.

Brits Sing 80th Anniversay Wishes to Rodgers and Hammerstein in Staid Tribute ... The Best, the Worst, and the Strangest ...

Review: My Favorite Things: Rodgers and Hammerstein's 80th Anniversary on PBS Great Performances  / 90 minutes /  at Theater Royal Drury Lane, May 31.

The most moving moment in this overly sentimental -- to the point of maudlin -- 80th Anniversary tribute to the musical theater giants: Anther giant, Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber, appearing at the end, having a hard time holding back  tears of genuine love for the team, of how, without them, there might not have been the musicals he composed. 

THE BEST: The songs are powered by some of the finest talents.   Among the towering treasures, "Younger Than Springtime"gave me the indescribable thrill I felt when first hearing this song in my youth.

THE WORST: Marisha Wallace's self-indulgent, vulgarized rendition of I Can't Say No from Oklahoma. There is a delicate line between character interpretation and culture signalling.

THE STRANGEST: Totally out of place on a program alleging to celebrate the collaborations of Dick and Oscar.  A numbingly oddball song called Something Good, feebly floating the idea of a "wicked childhood"in Maria's background.  This torturous ditty was NOT created by R&H, but by the composer, writing his own words, and inserted in the movie version of The Sound of Music, to replace a lovely ballad, An Ordinary Couple.  Rodgers was said to have never liked the number, so with Oscar gone, he pounced.

SAME OLD. SAME OLD:  The 90 minute PBS version ignores one of the six successful R&H stage musicals, Flower Drum Song. And the entire lot of songs on the CD leaves out numbers more dark and sophisticated, such as A Lonely Room from Oklahoma, and How Can Love Survive from The Sound of Music. (See it brilliantly choreographed in The Sound of Music, Live, 2015.) Another absolute gem is the very anti-sentimental Shall I Tell You What I Think of You? from The King and I.

All of which, suggests poor, inept oversight.  The world of R&H, forever lionized for its virtues, is, the deeper you go, shaded with realism and off beat emotions, sometimes subtly.There is a very quiet number in Flower Drum Song, daringly quiet, I am Going to Like It Here.  Whenever I play the album, I marvel at how the calming atmosphere it evokes affects me, readjusting my mood to slow down for something so utterly simple, and to find in it rare beauty.

The 42-song CD will give you at least one song from all their scores. 

Singing: A

Minimal Dancing: B-

Range of the canon represented: D

Chapter Titles For My New Book Revealed

 Coming from BearManor Media on July 4th

KEEP THAT DAY JOB!

HOW TO ENJOY CHASING SHOWBIZ WITHOUT GOING MAD

Not Born in a Trunk

On Stage in an Orange Crate 

The Sink in My Salad 

Antenna Acrobat to Cash Man at the People’s Window 

 
Be A Clown, Be a Sledgehammer 

Furniture, Dogs, and the Moon on Credit 

Broadway Bound at College 

Park Avenue Calls

Why, You Don’t Look Like a Circus Press Agent to Me!  

No, I Don’t Give Private Lessons for Roller Derby 

 

Pitching Elephants to ABC from a Payphone

 
Cast and Framed for Restroom Duty 

Clerking for Egg Heads and Hard Hats 

 File Me Out of This Flop 

 Hollywood Takes on Ringling

Dream Boss from Central Casting 

 

 Just Another Day in Quake City 

 
 Law Land Follies  

Still Merrily Stranded Out of Town

Curtains Rise, Curtains Fall

A True Trapeze Queen Shamefully Ignored By History

 

 Update, 5/28

Our winner had checked in!  He posted under The Magic Guys, but somehow, his full message did not come through.  His answers was:

Latvian aerialist Lena Jourdan, of the Flying Jordans

Congrats, Magic Guys!

End of update. 

Still ignored by writers and historians who should know better: Lena Jordan, not Ernest Clarke, was the first flyer to turn a triple somersault on the trapeze.  Most sources place the feat on Jordan Bros. Circus in Australia, 1897. But according to the Guinness Book of Records, Jordan actually turned the first triple in New York city with the Flying Jordans, an American troupe, in 1896, at Koster & Bial's Theatre 

Not so fast, says Wikipedia, claiming that the New York record has not been officially recognized. Rather,  In May 1897, Jordan, aged 16, "became the first recorded person to perform a triple somersault during a routine in Sydney, Australia."

The Circus Ring of Fame in Sarasota propounded the myth by ignoring  Jordan altogether, in order to give  Antoinette Concello credit for first female to turn the triple. 

How does the Circus Historical Society check in on this?  I once followed a thread on their history message board, all the way to a contributor who confirmed that, indeed, the honor goes to Jordan. 

SUNDAY MORNING NOW, IMMERSIVELY YOURS: Tornadoes Topple Tops ... Daring Dames Dare Globes of Death ... Garden Goes Nuclear, Vegas Goes Artsy ...

         
     OLD CAN BE NEW AGAIN: Take a tent fainting under nature’s wrath, and you may have a tour suddenly gone down with a vengeance. That would be our visiting tenter from Germany, Great Bavarian Circus, whose big top got hammered to shreds by a tornado thundering across the East Coast.  Sad sight, the party over almost before it began. They came here to share, and they have my deepest sympathy. 

     ANOTHER TENT IN SHAMBLES is Florida State University’s Flying High Circus. “It was jarring to see it all go down in that manner,” told director Chas Mathes to the Tallahassee Democrat. Not just one, or two, but three EF-2 tornados. Back to Italy goes FSU, needing a replacement top from the land that created (or did they?) those fantastically shaped modern day Scheherazade tents.  Maybe the passionate Italians will give FSU a courtesy discount.  Fly on and Higher, Flying High! 

     TUNE UP YOUR GIRLY GRIT, Brit gals!  Crcuses are looking for you.  It’s happening across the Big Pond, reports our London informant on the go, Douglas McPherson, in The Stage. He profiles the founder of Ireland’s Daring Dames Festival, Dea Birkett.  Now in its third year, her show  fosters an All-Female Cast. While, over at Big Kid Circus (love that name), they’re touting  “Europe's first all-female Globe of Death motorcycle riders,”  the Kirilova Sisters trio.  And just when I was hoping this monster bore of a stunt would blast its way into infinity’s graveyard.  Here’s what I’d relish: Put a pair of high-stepping distaff daredevils teasing trouble on the double wheel.  How’s that for a ballyhoo?     

     DAMES ON FLAMES: These equity-pandering innovators are said to be aimed at challenging gender stereotypes in the ring.  Okay, I’m usually ill at ease with such a hollow premise, except that here, McPherson quotes strong woman, Aoife Raleigh,  knocking down a shamefully biased account peddled for years by hard core feminists headquartered in San Francisco:  “There’s always been a space in the circus where women can be physical.” 

       RECALLING THE ROLE of women in big tops,  Douglas spins magic describing Patty Asltey, wife of modern day circus founder,  Philip, riding on horseback around the ring “with her hands gloved in a swarm of living bees!”

     THEY'VE WALKED HIGH WIRES for years, swung free and high, posed on pachyderms, danced over horses.  For years.  Except that ... Except that what? Well, for starters, did they ever climb the Chinese poles or –  LOVE this one – serve as CATCHER on the flying trapeze?  Those are among the skills our new-line big top disputers are aiming to take on ....  It’s a novelty sure to tickle a jaded public that may be restless for something beyond the current, increasingly predictable staples.

The gang was all there: Kiyome Hara, Chester Cable, Michelle Wiertalla, Wini McKay, Alex Smith, and Betty Smith.

      GOING NUCLEAR AT GARDEN BROS., as reported by a tickled Alex Smith, sounds like a rousing good party  in a semi-brawling concession pit. That is, a little messy and rowdy and more like old  Barnum than new Cirque. Says our man on the lot:  “They’re not PC including a dog act, World’s smallest man ... and they're full of acts I'm unfamiliar with." Now, that I like -- a lot.  "I can tell you already it’s noisy with vendors and uncontrolled audience, but then I guess it is NUCLEAR” Brilliant deduction, Alex!  For the first time, I actually have a yen to take in this easy-to-knock enterprise.

     THERE'S A RESTLESS PUBLIC out there that wants circus, but wants it against safe and stale formats.  Wants a little more, dare I see, gruff and wild? Claims Alex, “They packed them in a straw house,”and that ads up to  2,185 people.  If you dig deeper into the Yelp two-star average reviews, you may find reason to go see for yourself.  Even in a mess, sometimes you can spot genuine quality.

 

       MAKING CIRCUS ART IN SIN CITY -- MAYBE:  Vegas to host the first International Circus Festival, slated for Nov. 1 - 10, organized by trapeze flyer Renato Fernandes,  seen above, who enjoys credit for the first in history to turn a Double Twisting Layout and Half.  Far from the rowdy Garden party, Renato is burning to produce a  “new spectacle that transcends borders, celebrates diversity, and enriches communities”  Somebody please give me a  break!  Hasn’t circus been naturally doing this for centuries?  

      BUT GOING DEEPER  into the website, this I nearly missed: This project will only be funded if it reaches its [funding] goal by Wed, June 12 2024 12:00 PM PDT. 

      ONTO THE MORE CONCRETE "IMMERSIVE," the latest new word, which Renato drops and which the Felds started floating on their last show that dared call itself a circus — the one that came crashing down in 2017.  Back at it without “circus” in the tile, heck, if  New Ringling really wants to maximize such all-encompassing encounters, I’d suggest putting the audience in the ring, and running the show around and over it.  And maybe into it.  Oh, what a perverse new spectacle, just in time to be rendered more chillingly harmless when robots in spangles arrive.

Know what? I am already feeling homesick for the Garden jam. 

Be The First to Answer the Next Big Question, and Win a Free Copy of My New Book, Keep That Day Job!

 I will post it here at 6 pm PDT, on Sunday May 19

It may be too easy to answer, so I'd suggest you pounce the moment the posting hits.

And remember, you must give a name, either your own or a made-up one.  All answers will NOT be posted.