Cirque du Soleil Fans Don't Believe in "Believe" ...

Can master illusionist Guy Laliberte turn a turkey into a long-running turkey? Among seven or eight recent consumer reviews on BroadwayBox.Com for Cirque du Soleil's new Vegas show, Believe, all of them in negative territory, here is one from EastDakota, titled "Terrible":A group of us in town from Boston saw the Chris Angel show last night. I had a free ticket and I still felt ripped off. It is sad to watch Cirque, which I generally have enjoyed over the years, put their name on something so awful. There hasn't been a great Cirque show in Vegas since "O" and that was 10 years ago. The Chris Angel show sets a new low.Unlike "Le Reve" or "Ka" or some of the other Cirque-like shows that started bad butthey have tinkered with and made fairly good, the Chris Angel show seems unlikely to be fixable...

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Friday Flip Flops: Give 'Em Cotton Candy, or, No, Give 'Em Blood ...

Shame on Me! Should have never taken up the pretentious art of “circus reviewing.” Fact is, were I not the only one out there doing this (yes, I know, I’m not the only one, but still), I would not strike others as nearly so odd or eccentric or strange or extreme. Or, what, so stupidly critical ... When 4-letter hate mail arrives, as it did today, aiming profanity at my 2-star review last year of Circus Chimera, I shudder, wondering how much of this I should allow before civilized eyes ... Must mull it over ... In my precocious youth, as opposed to my precocious now, I once irked a Circus Review reader, who had had enough of my lip. Poor editor John Swan, who spent many a page on my out-of-control teenage prose, must have wondered what sort of a monster he’d unleashed ...Complained the letter...

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Sunday Monring, Looking Back: Unseen Stars of the Big Top -- They Move the Show Day In and Day Out

This first appeared on September 19, 2008Carson and Barnes Circus is now trouping north through CaliforniaOn a cold and grey Friday morning in San Francisco at the Cow Palace while Carson & Barnes crews set up the big top, I can’t remember ever feeling as emotional about a circus as I did that day. Knowing this may be the last year for a touring American three-ring show under canvas, so many feelings welled up inside me. Perhaps I was living through my own Pittsburgh, for I thought about that day in 1956 when fans watched Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey pitch its tents for the last time. I remembered reading about the sadness they felt, the tears they shed. And I felt a rush of those same emotions myself.Dory Miller once told me,...

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Before Shrinking Crowds, Carson & Barnes Sparkles, then Glimmers Like a Fading Universe

Circus Review: Carson & BarnesCow Palace upper parking lotSan Francisco, September 12, 4:30 p.m. Seats: $27.00 topRides: $6.00 top (elephant)The wonder of Carson & Barnes Circus is that at its best, it is as good as Ringling once was. If only its best could last beyond the first four or five compelling displays. After that, sadly, a very promising show slides downward into a paceless hodgepodge — weaker and fewer acts, disruptive concession activities and woefully amateurish clowning. A thrilling non-stop stream of early action (worth 3-1/2 stars) had the audience ooing and ahhing with shared delight — from festive opening splash “Be A Clown!” through three-ring displays of charming dogs and ponies, inventive contortionists and aerialists,...

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Midweek Midway L’Amyx: Feld’s New Monster Jams, Dragone’s Touring Cirque du Seuss ...

Okay, flats cut and spotted. Runs up. Roll them wagons off, guys! ... Now you people over there, stay back, okay? And keep your kids in toe! ... Hey, Sage! Spot those monster trucks in back of the hula hoop wagon! What’d you say? Don Covington has news? Ask him to meet me over by the ice house! Okay, get those Story Department wagons down the runs and move ‘em out!Getting a little crowded out here? Now, you people new to this midway, check out the chat tents over there under the trees. Comments getting tossed around on the inside ... I’ve got to start taking notes myself. It’s all so mixed up, this dizzy debate about whatever it is we still call “circus.” Kenneth Feld, did you hear, just sank $175 million into a shaky venture called Live Nation Motor Sports, according to the Wall Street Journal...

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South Pacific Rules Box Office as Broadway Biz Plunges ....

Last week on shaky Broadway stages (perhaps a back-to-school phenomenon), most shows suffered drastic declines in patronage, the worst being a not so merry Mary Poppins , down by 46.7% to a meager 46.5% capacity.Among other surprising losers, Spring Awakening filled up only 51% of the seats; Grease, 55.5%; Legally Blond, 49.9%. Recent departures include the long-running Rent and A Chorus Line, which enjoyed a nearly two year run on the revival boards and is now touring.Most remarkably, South Pacific in revival for the first time ruled the pack at 99.8% followed by Wicked (98.2%)Rodgers and Hammerstein must be smiling brightly wherever they a...

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Sunday Morning Scramble: When Artist and Audience Share Illusions ...

Illusions: without them most of us would have little will to live. Poor Judy Garland, nearing the end of her troubled existence, there she was, all alone curled up backstage in the womb of a theatre dressing room, unable to get up and leave and go out and face the real world. Remembered talk show host Dick Cavett, on whose morning program Garland had just appeared, “I couldn’t get her out of the dressing room. I left the theatre and later walked back well after tape time. And she was still there.”Still lost in her life-saving fantasies. Judy survived on them just as we the audience do. And so she clung to the world of make believe. Clung to the stage, the dressing room. “She was home in those two places,” remembered Cavett. “Leave them and...

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Midweek Midway Blues? Kelly Miller Reports Better Biz --- John Ringling North II Plotting 2009 Edition ...

Okay, first off, let’s not go out and commit mass suicide — not yet. Yeah, the news out of Hugo about Carson & Barnes is depressing, but that doesn’t mean the show, or all the others now on the road, will will not return next year. May I remind you, kids, that we go through these wrenching predictions of doom about every year (yeah, I know, it’s fun being melodramatic, but this IS circus, right?) ... Sure, the tent and indoor shows are shrinking in size. In corporate America, it’s called “downsizing.” Don’t count out our fearless owners (the Byrds and the Pughs, for example) who have been keeping these tricky things on the road for ages ... Somehow, they know how. Don’t overlook Big Apple Circus (there's the BAC ring crew), a wonderfully...

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MIDWAY FLASH ... MIDWAY FLASH. ... SAY GOODBYE TO THREE RINGS ON CARSON AND BARNES

Rush to Carson and Barnes Circus this season. Run, fly, hitchhike, roller skate, carpool, crawl, even go Greyhound -- but go whenever America's last 3-ring big top comes your way. For after it falls for the final time at the end of its 2008 campaign, you won't see three rings under canvas anymoreNext year, "it could be two," states remarkably forthcoming C&B staffer, Nancy Gaona. But it won't be three.I spoke with Nancy this morning by telephone about business in general. “So-so” is how she characterized the crowds this year, stating that every year, business “gets worse.” And she believes such is the case on virtually all U.S. shows. “We all know it’s going to happen,” said she.Why, I asked?Nancy pointed to the dismal economy. But what about those stay at home Americans who this year...

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