Creative Currents Under a Great War ... South Pacific to Victory At Sea

I am so enthralled, in love really, with the Broadway revival of South Pacific (it's brilliantly inspired score remains my favorite), that I've seen it twice in NY and will again if I'm back there before it closes. And I've been moved to finally get a library copy of the book upon which the show is based, James A. Michener's novel Tales of the South Pacific. What a rich and rewarding work, the prose and realistic detail close in purity to Hemingway. I am waiting to reach the two or three stories used by Oscar Hammerstein II and Josh Logan in their Pulitzer prize winning adaptation of the book. Already, however, Nellie Forbush has entered (to me, I forever see Mary Martin), but in a story about an affair she has with an officer -- ill fated...

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Slapdash Sunday: Showbizery Leftovers, I think ... Well, They're Free! ...

Where do we start. How about Ella in the background, under the L'Amyx tea tent in Oaktown, as the locals call the place.Country & Western, like opera, it never got me. But oh, what a soft lyrical high: A sweet Japanese singer crooning "Country Road," as to infuse this classic with Great American songbook cache. So perfect on a mellow morning. And where should I be going, if anywhere. I was thinking, why not a Best of TV Commercials DVD? Or is there already one. That Geico character, the Pizza Whisperer, the gosh-oh-my! Progressive Insurance gal. AND, did you see the spaghetti lady getting whipped in her face by a thin noodle on the tip of her proper fork lashing out against it?!!!!!HaHaHa!!! I'd love seeing all of these amusing characters...

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The Morning Midway: A Big Top Giant Who Might Have Been ...

Circus owners, remarkable considering all of the struggles they face, are remarkably enduring. Most of them.Here was one who showed such great promise -- Sid Kellner, seen here in this 1969 newspaper photo with his son George, 15, when the Kellner name spelled the promise of a great success ahead. Today, while purging my "archives" (I hate clutter), I came across this picture. Such a radiant reminder of how a dream can seem so real in the beginning. At the time, I had just finished handling "national press representative " duties for the show on its 10-week summer tour, driving a Ford Bronco (oh, what I did when I was young) from west to left coasts and back. Only job I ever had that got me one of those little business cards. I stayed in...

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The Morning Midway: Al Ringling Theatre Jumps with C&W, Magic, and a Capra Silent

It may be musty. May be a little creaky and cranky (that photo is very flattering), but oh what an atmospheric journey back to the long-lost. This last weekend, Baraboo's Al Ringling Theatre, five years away from its centennial anniversary, hosted three nights of disparate entertainment, something maybe for everyone:Friday: Country singer Dayna Manlow's band from ChicagoSaturday: Illusionist Tristan CristSunday: The 1926 Frank Capra directed silent film The Strong Man, with a live original score supplied by Donnie Rankin at the mighty Barton Theatre Organ. Also on the bill were animated movie shorts and "a little vaudeville."Tickets for these events ranged from $5 to $10.Stage also hosts plays and musicals. How many towns this size...

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The Morning Midway: Even Sarasota's Ringling Museum Faces Big Funding Cutbacks, Uncertain Future ...

It's not all peaches, Picasso and popcorn at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the upscale Sarasota venue which also hosts, like it or not, the ever-expanding Ringling Museum of the Circus.Fiscal woes are adding up, despite the place attracting a rather impressive 300,000 people a year. That breaks down to an average of over 800 patrons per day. I wonder how many of those ticket buyers went there to see the Ringlings rather than the Rubens? The museum has 10,000 members, and it has grown in stature among art circles.State of Florida, said to provide roughly half the museum's $13.5 million budget, making waves about pulling out. The estate, willed to Florida by circus king John Ringling, has been run since 2000 by Florida State...

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Doc Film Giant Michael Moore Deserves Profound Thanks for "Sicko" -- Helped Legitimize Health Care Debate ...

"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...""The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health" -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, State of the Union Address, January 11, 1944.Because I believe in many of the fundamental goals of the health care bill that is on the verge of passing tonight (I am well covered myself), and without turning this into a speech, I reflect on the searing movie put out by documentary showman Michael Moore, Sicko and consider with deep appreciation its critical impact on the debate among Americans in recent years concerning universal health care coverage. Moore's riveting film opened my eyes, as I am sure it did many others, to a different view of the countries with free health care...

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Friday Fireworks: Tigers, Tigers Burning Bright ... Olympics Versus Circus ...”Baraboo Revisited” Revisited ..

Snarling circus, come back! Clyde Beatty, can you hear us up here? Or, excuse me, down there? ... Mable Stark, come out of the dark. Alfred Court, to center ring report! Big Top Johnnies bringing back the Big Cage, right and left, evidently sensing a certain hunger from the crowds for old fashioned sawdust grit ...One Johnny who never left the lot, Johnny Pugh, is pulling out the jungle stops, bringing back tigers into the show. Might the free market be speaking? Pugh's Cole Bros. Circus, about to hit the mud in DeLand, also to offer something called a daredevils ATV show. Also, a Thunder Dome, and of course, the cannon. I smell gusto over the Cole tent. Down on the ground, the one finger stand makes a return. Been gone long enough to maybe...

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I'm Feeling Blue: Broadway Without "South Pacific"; PBS Without Bill Moyers ...

The record-breaking run of South Pacific at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre (the longest run ever for a Rodgers & Hammerstein revival) comes to an end on August 25, and I feel a deep sadness. A die-hard R&H fan, I've seen the show twice, and will likely a third time if I'm back there this summer. It is simply a bright and brilliant, radiantly professional revival, so true to the original script. A glorious evening. I suppose I fancied it staying around forever. Bill Moyers: What a treasure to be losing. Only after returning to PBS three years ago, again he is exiting. I can't think of a better news and serious opinion-sharing show on TV. Recently, addressing the health care debate, Moyers had on two guests, both in favor of a health care bill, but one very much not of the current...

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MIDWAY FLASH: Ringling Returns to Coney in 2010

This just in from Covington Connected, Ringling to play Coney Island again this summer, from June through labor day. Under the big top.More details to follow ...

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Monday Morning In-Box: Big Top Bits in a Whisper

Good Morning, Monday...Promise to go gentle here, seeing as how some of you may be reading me at work. I remember day-job days, surfing on the sly. I know, you're maybe feeling flat and stale at the foot of another five day climb, another week facing you, and the last thing you need is me in critical mode, so let's take this one gentle step at a time ...Maestro, if you please, ease the orchestra into a soft refrain and let the flyer float. There's your lead-in photo, aerialist sky high over Baltimore's Cirque de la Symphonie. Soothing enough? ... And let's take a look at Cavalia's surreal tent, under which "horses" prance lyrically about, caressed by loving trainers, all of it carefully calibrated to lend the proper and humane imagery befitting...

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The Morning Midway: Jugglers & Bear Trainers, Rising and Falling ... And More ...

Covington Connected, we learn many things: Good news and bad, triumphs and tragedies, the beat of the big top without stop. Still has a pulse. Small community maybe, but to its fans, still a dynamic charmer that refuses not to keep getting back up each spring (okay, insert your month here) see only sunshine across mud, and hit the roads ...World Champ Anthony Gatto, only juggler ever to land Monte Carlo Gold and recently a star of Cirque du Soleil's Kooza, shifting locations to the show's La Nouba unit at Disney World, and happy to keep working. Did ya know he likes to chat with the audience while keeping his stats in motion and intact? (11 world records, among them seven clubs forming a fluid fountain for 4 minutes and 20 seconds.)......

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Wednesday Wacky: Wallendas, Stop Trying to "Fly"! Copeland & Combs, Chill Out ....

Why the "Flying Wallendas"? Seems now that even THEY honor this ridiculously misleading act descriptor. From Jack Ryan, who penned a piece (that I, sorry Jack, misplaced) on the famed wire-walking family for the recent Circus Sarasota, even Tino Wallenda has given in by using the phrase repeatedly on his website, lending family credence to this shoddy misconception. No wonder it lingers on; incredibly the family endorses it! Here's our Big Question: Why were they ever called The Flying Wallendas in the first place? Best answer I could get years ago was this: "flying" referred to their tragic fall in Detroit in the sixties, the perverse notion being that they "flew" off the wire, into the air, and down onto the ground. How utterly stupid...

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Tuesday Twitters: Is that Guy Bleeding? Only Ketchup? Okay, Bring Him Out Here, I Guess ...

Crazy blogging. I get e-mails, oh maybe one a month or so. Here's this guy, told you about him a while back, wanting me to give you his link. Wanting a plug, which does flatter. The website he gave me not then working, so I ventured into another web world of same guy, very bloody and strange (pardon my aversion to clean wholesome family S&M), but maybe it was simulated, maybe I was hasty in cringing and dialing my hospital valet service. Guy got back to me, unruffled, sending me legit link.His name: BARRY SILVER. Good show name. PA dude. Looking for a ring to hang out in, for applause and $. Talk about muti-talented -- clowning, juggling, swords and neon tubes, et all. He's even a "certified Hebrew school teacher." Only talent...

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Sunday Scramble: Another Circus Museum, Anybody? So Long, Sandra Bezic Watchers ...

Lots of talk about circus museums, some lost to history, some in trouble, some about to open and others maybe about to close ... Let’s start with the greatest flop of them all: Here’s comment guy Jeff Swanson remembering not favorably Irvin Feld’s grandiose Circus World, a spectacular vision born of ego only partly realized that left Jeff feeling stood up: “What I couldn’t dismiss was what wasn’t there. I paid my money and within an hour I was pulling out of the parking lot having seen all there was — not the day I had hoped for. I remember spending a good deal of time reading the display showing what Irvin was planning and wanted the pace to be.” In sync with Ben Trumble’s take on the subject, agreed patron Jeff, “too little too soon.”Over to Baraboo, still a precarious operation, its...

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Sunday Morning with Igor Stravinsky: The Architecture of Music ...

"Construction once completed ... there is nothing more to be said ... it is precisely ... this achieved order, which produces in us a unique emotion having nothing in common with our ordinary sensations ... One could not better define the sensation produced by music than by saying that it is identical with that evoked by contemplation of the interplay of architectural form...

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Disney Florida to Offer "Interactive" Three Ring Tent Circus; Also Mulling Dumbo for Broadway

Touted the "largest expansion" in Magic Kingdom Theme Park history, Disney breaking ground on four new neighborhoods in Fantasyland. One will invite patrons to participate in a "series of interactive experiences" under an air-conditioned three-ring circus tent. Three rings, how interesting; maybe they never really went away? Looking at this photo of a scale model of the expansion underway, note how it combines circus and carnival. Dumbo (you may know him/her as the flying elephant) will have a starring presence.Not sure what "interactive" means here, but the idea of a full circle movie dazzling our senses with three rings of action sounds terrific. I was thinking along these lines when I made my suggestions for a new kind of Circus World...

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Circus World Museum Board Member Responds to My Post, "New Visions Needed"

Please Note: My posting about Circus World Museum evidently hurt some feelings in Baraboo. I received a thoughtful e-mail from Jonathan Lipp, a CWM board member, although he made clear that he was not writing me in his capacity as a member of the board but as an individual. I asked him for permission to reprint his message in its entirety, allowing for no editing. He granted permission, so here it follows:David,Please take my comments as a fellow who loves circus and is doing all I can to support a place I love. I only wish there were more of us who could show support, My position is to find solutions and support those who care enough to keep an important part of our history alive.My name is Jonathan Lipp, I serve on the Board of Circus World, but am writing as an individual, not speaking...

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The Morning Midway: The Taschen Photo Book: $19.98 at Barnes & Noble ...

[The above photo from Life magazine would have given this book a much needed dramatic end point: The finale "Hoop Dee Doo" at the last performance of Ringling Bros. and Barnum Bailey Circus under the big top in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 16, 1956]When I read on Steve Copeland's blog that he had picked up a copy of The Circus: 1870-1950 for only $20.00 at a Barnes and Noble in Texas, in Santa Rosa today visiting a friend, out of curiosity I stepped into the B&N outlet there;; they had at least 20 copies on display, price: $19.98. I couldn't believe it. Too good a deal, so I fell for it. However, this turns out to be a junior edition of the monster museum-in-your-lap original. It has a new title: The Circus: 1870s-1950s.It has lost...

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