Fright Night Flashes: Cirque du Soleil Fans Raving Desbelievers; Jumbo, Get Back Into Your Spandex! Big Apple Singing in the Rain...

Update, 11/3 AM: Believe was panned in today's Los Angeles Times -- "unbelievably bad"They don’t believe in Believe, no they don’t, and they are die-hard Cirque fans with passion and attitude, and how I love that ... So mad are they, they knocked their way up to the top of this week’s flip flop pile. Oh, are they courageously vocal: “SOOOOOOOOO disappointing! Criss Angel is a douche bag and Cirque is ruining their reputation by putting their name on this show!!!” cries Cirque fan “g.” G oh G, I feel your sense of abandonment, recalling when a circus called Ringling gave up its tents many years ago and I spent many days crying all alone in my bedroom ... And here rattles another shocked non-believer, fully named Matt Krogol, who sheds emotion...

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Momentous Big Top Transfer: Minus Paul Binder, Big Apple Circus Heads Perilously Down Uncharted Trails ...

Over and in the sawdust ringwhere wizards flyand tumblers springno need to give them plays to plyThe act is kingThe act is the thingFrom 10/26/08Paul Binder’s profound respect for first-rate circus performers is the reason why, I believe, the one ring show he and Michael Christensen founded 31 years ago has endured in the country’s most competitive market. Now with Binder (and Christensen to follow, it is rumored) stepping down, as first reported in The New York Times, this company is heading into largely uncharted territory virtually never before traveled by an American circus. There is, to be sure, the ominous if minor example of what became of the Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco (remember San Francisco?) when a small board of directors...

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Broadway Hello, Broadway Good Bye

It’s a tough town, New York. Best theatre town in the world. Toughest theatre town in the world. Try your luck on the big boards — if you can audition (or buy or sleep) your way in, but don’t expect a pass from the critics. Toughest critics in the world. All except for maybe none of them on the right night. Even Clive Barnes, I’ve heard, only sleeps through selected opening nights.Don’t expect a pass, either, from the crowds. Might decide to like you. Might decide you’re too retro or old hat, too brainy or silly or obtuse or, well, just too not quite right for the moment.The recent departure without fanfare of Legally Blonde proves my New York instincts about correct, if you’ll allow me a shameless moment of self-kudoizing. When I saw Blonde...

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MIDWAY FLASH ... MIDWAY FLASH ... Paul Binder to Exit Big Apple Circus ... End of a Notable Era?

In a stunning development covered in today's New York Times, Big Apple Circus founder and artistic director Paul Binder, 66, is tossing in his ringmaster's whistle and stepping aside."Finally, I can get off the road," Binder told reporter Glenn Collins. "I didn't want to do this until I was on my deathbed."Binder, who founded the circus 31 years ago in New York City, goes against big top history in calling it quits when his show is doing so well. He plans to continue behind the scenes as an "artistic advisor" and world-wide talent scout.In to replace Binder comes the company's 48-year-old general manger Guillaume Dufresnoy, who has been with the show for 21 years. The French born Guillaume, before joining BAC, performed as an aerialist in France and Switzerland.The NYT report hints of company...

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Death of a Salesman -- and/or An Actor?

To watch an actor who has appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company of London practice his craft in a community theatre setting is quite an experience. This was my treat yesterday up in Santa Rosa (pop 157.000) at the admirably striving Sixth Street Playhouse, where Death of a Salesmanan was presented.I had never heard the name Daniel Benzali, who in the U.S. is known largely for his work in TV, his most touted role being that of Ted Hoffman in ABC’s Murder One. On the West End, he starred as Juan Peron in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Evita, and he also appeared as Max von Mayerling in the world premiere of Webber’s Sunset Boulevard in London. And now he was in Santa Rosa playing Willy Loman in perhaps only the second production I have...

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Friday Flip Flops: Spangles to Spandex; Ringling to Rungeling? And the Elephants Stay On Pointe...

Not a Big Apple thrill to everyone: A visitor to this blog who goes by the name of “Big Apple Got My Money”, not tickled over the new Big Apple Circus lineup, barking: “No elephants! No Exotics! Dogs and horses running to live music is not a circus! It’s men in spandex minus all the class of Soleil” I love that, even though, gotta tell you, let it be spandex or polyester as long as BAC goes high with a trapeze act and all the other goodies promised ... Calling Red State Steady Eddie: Blue State needs you! You’re talking up packed houses for Carson & Barnes, recently of the 3- ring variety, in a June red date somewhere you promoted into a $50,000 bonanza, and nobody not returning after intermission. "We thought the show was great." Congrats, Mr. Natural Born promoter. How about donning...

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Shame on the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization and American Musical Theatre of San Jose

"Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song!" -- claims a shamefully misleading pitch put out by the American Musical Theatre of San Jose. Actually, other than using the original songs, the San Jose group is not presenting the Flower Drum Song created by Rodgers and Hammerstein at all, but the callously deconstructed, rewritten, reduced and reconfigured version by Henry David Hwang, a brazen assault on the original work that got critically blasted in a flop New York revival in 2001. San Jose and the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization demonstrate brazen disrespect for the legacy of two musical theatre giants by misleading the public. This, in fact, constitutes one of the most deceitful marketing campaigns I have yet encountered.San Jose's Flower Drum...

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Getting Short Changed in a Ringling Big Top -- Was it Condoned by North & Concello?

"Truth destroys only that which is untrue."-- credited to the philosophy of Mary Baker EddyThe remarkable account, by former Ringling ticket seller William Taggart, of an organized short changing operation on a circus long-acclaimed for shunning such a practice, raises questions that deserve to be addressed, if for no other reason than to substantiate as best we can the historical record. Although Taggart's tale refutes everything I have ever read and heard about Ringling history and ethics, I am prepared to face the facts, wherever they may take us. In his fine article, just published in Bandwagon, Bill makes two key statements that point to an organized operation, if not run from the top down, then one hosted by ticket department superintendent...

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Friday Flip Flops: Brother, Can You Spare a Ring?

Digging for the truth over Dragonwell here at L’Amyx, let’s start out simple, and see where simple goes, okay? Rumorhazit (as Billy Barton would say), that John Ringling North II loses use of the Kelly Miller Circus title end of the season. Not anywhere near, says show manager Jim Royal. “The title came with the corporation, so we have it permanently. Like so many rumors, I have no idea why it started.” So there! Now, as for whatever became of that Feld Entertainment lawsuit against JRN II daring to flaunt his family name on show property, all I could extract from Sir Royal was this: “It was settled to the satisfaction of both parties,” and what's more, both parties agreed not to disclose the details. SO, we are free, for what it’s worth, to...

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Lost in Film Noir: Dark Passage Through a City of Shared Loneliness....

In so many ways, a movie can pull us into its world and hold us captive for irrational reasons. No wonder nobody can agree on top ten lists. What enthralls me may bore you. So much depends on what we bring to the screen. I’ll be the first to admit that the moody late forties nightscape of San Francisco as dramatized in the Bogart-Becall film, Dark Passage, grabs hold of my soul like the city once did in my youth. In it are so many lonely little people living out their lives in quiet little studio apartments inside tall buildings crowded together on tall foggy hills. And when I see a neon sign spelling Fosters Restaurant, I recall busing dishes there — before the city’s subtle sophistication gave way to the in-your-face crowd. Before cable cars...

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Midweek Midway Mix: John Ringling North II Tastes Chicago Success; Cirque Du Soleil Lays Monster Egg in Vegas? ... Big Top Bail Outs?

So you want to be a circus owner? So you think you got the goods? So go try your luck in tough fickle Chicago and then see. It’s a town of straw houses or raw houses. The late Cliff Vargas struggled for respect, mostly in vain. Binder and Christensen, whose Big Apple Circus should have done well there, did not. Left ‘em humbled. No, sir, the windy city can turn on your tents like a sub prime nightmare. Kelly-Miller just enjoyed near-full houses last weekend, and that’s something to Ringling about — or John R. North about. (It’s that Feld Entertainment litigation thing, you know.) Nonetheless, JRN II dared to tell a reporter along the road that it was time to return to the family business. “When you are born in the circus,” said he, “you might...

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