When last I updated, they were comfortably back in the 70% range, and so I though maybe they are finding a hook to keep going.
Latest figure: 56.9%.
From Broadway World, two days ago: "What an embarrassing number even in a week where many shows took a big hit. I expect a closing notice for Water For Elephants sometime soon too
A huge crowd here last Friday, but not a one of them could produce the correct answer to the question: Who was the first and still only performer to land a Gold Clown for the type of act they performed at Monte Carlo? The next day came the answer:
JUGGLER ANTHONY GATTO
The winner:
BONNIE O'CONNOR
Congrats, Bonnie! I will e-mail you to facilitate my sending you your copy.
Sometimes today when we are drowning in AI, bots, and even the "Operator" no longer being there,it is possible to get through. I just start dialing numbers, hoping that one will still work, better yet, might deliver me to a living human being from the age of He and She.
FIRST CALL: Why did CEO Scott O'Donnell, as the official story goes, which he confirmed when I reached him by phone, "resign" from circus world? Scott would only say that he and his overlords (aka: Wisconsin Historical Society) did not share the same vision for the future.
So, dialing for balance by reaching out to WHS and leaving messages with, among others, Colleen in Media Relations, she did return my call! I asked her if she could explain how they had come to loggerheads. She promised to consult with others and get back to me. This she did, but with not a single word answering my specific query. She sent me the same press release that I already had, which I quoted from in the story I earlier posted. An expert in the ways of the business world might be able to decode this, but I am not going there.
SECOND CALL: To Crypto Center (previously Staples) in L.A, about Ringling's recent three day stop there. To the guy, Lewis, who answered the phone, I said that I was hoping to get an estimation from them of the average number of customers in the seats per performance. He did not waste an empty second in evasion or passing the buck, but answered: "Between six and eight thousand." The arena seats 20.000.
Would that have been a disappointment to Crypto, I asked my source. "No," he replied.
You can look at the figure in two ways: What a flop! Not even half houses!
Or, you can look at the figure in context. Is there another circus out there anywhere in the world that draws that number of bodies in the seats?
EYES ON THE SCENE: And how did Ringling show? I have a deep state source who was on the scene and noted that the ends of the arena were blocked out. Pyrotechnics "were greatly reduced" and the large overhead screens were not in use.The show, he reported, was a "scaled" down version of what he had seen at an earlier date months ago, which amounted to him as a "thinning of the herd." (I like that) For example, an Ethiopian father and son foot juggling was not on the bill. Some of those in his party, he noted, were critical of the show, but he stood by the excellent review he had given the show when he saw it earlier in the season.
End of on-the-ground reporting the older fashioned way.
The circus plays a big role in my new book Keep That Day Job! Here are some excerpts:
The Dark Side of a Spangle
Wallace Bros hired me to usher. A few weeks later, they recruited me to replace a fired clown. Now I was “with it and for it,” and now being one of them myself, soon — all too soon — reality’s wry sense of humor struck, when I was introduced to a real life sledgehammer. Sure, such a pleasure to meet you!
Dining, Haute-off-the-lot at Wallace Bros. Circus
$25.00 a week ... Not bad given the sweet free extras that come with the glories of performing — your flat bunk in the truck you share with the band, and the three full-course adventures served you each day in the “gut foundry” as some called it — while others preferred “ptomaine joint,” for cookhouse. One of our musicians regaled us over his having ordered chicken fracases for dinner and being served “fried flower”
Pitching Elephants to ABC from a Payphone
I am off skates, on a pay phone at the Greyhound bus depot in Chicago, having just arrived with a list of media contacts in hand. Time is of the essence, only three days before the circus of Sid Kellner, now titled George Matthew’s Great London, is to open in the suburb of Oak Terrace. I shove a lot of change into the phone, and start frantically dialing up local TV and radio stations, hoping to land free coverage
Typing through Tears
Up to my clerk's desk at a chemical company in Century City, steps the office manger, handing me a just published rave review in Variety of my musical, Those Ringlings. After reading it, I continue pecking dutifully away as a flood of tears come rolling down my face. No town like this town.
The Ringlings, as Cast in Hollywood
Jeffrey
Rockwell, who played Al Ringling was the son of Robert, who had played
Mr. Boynton on the TV version of Our Miss Brooks. Hal Landon, Sr.,
who played August Ringling, was in real life the father of Hal Landon,
Jr. The closest geographical link to Ringling history was Wisconsin
native Joseph Lustig, who took on the role of Alf T.
Wishing I Could Be with Sid
At my first Kaiser Steel Christmas dinner on Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland, while walking back to a private dining room the firm had secured, I spotted a former boss, Sid Kellner, sitting on a bar stool chatting with a woman of looks sitting next to him. How I wished I could be sitting with Sid instead. But Sid was from another time. And he could have been so much more, as I would profile in my book Behind the Big Top.
Buy your big show tickets now at the Amazon Annex!
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!
JUST PUBLISHED!
BUY NOW ON AMAZON
Or direct from the publisher: bearmanormedia. com
7.9.24
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.
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.
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
