Wintuk on the Rise? I took a look at some recent reviews of Cirque du Soleil’s third season at the Theatre at Madison Square Garden, where Wintuk, a show designed for holiday-happy moppets, seems to be growing in luster and charm. That kindly supporter of all things circus, The New York Times, offered a more affirmative review of this latest return visit. “Though the plot is little more than an excuse to move from act to act, the performances are invariably impressive,” wrote Ken Jaworowski. Okay, I am falling too; were I back there, I would love to give Wintuk a chance. Seems it has a simple yet doable “story” premise, good-sounding acts and the big snowfall payoff ... Talking Cirque, the pre-Broadway shakedown in the Windy City of its oddball stagecoction, Banana Shpeel, was met with a downbeat notice from the Chicago Tribune’s respected theatre-circus critic, Chris Jones, basically echoing a slew of angry consumer reviews. “cold, chaotic , clipped and cacophonous” is what Jones found. “There is a great deal to fix before this show opens in New York.” ... BTW: Did you know that the Montreal monster flopped out in the distant past with another try at going legit, a “musical” presented in arenas called Delirium?
Flacking the Feld Way: To ask a good circus press agent for a critical take on his boss, well, when his boss was the late Irvin Feld, is probably asking too much. Jack Ryan, who came on in 1968 when the Feld family took over for the Ringlings, has penned a lively looking-back piece, “Bards of the Big Top,” the last of two installments now on display in the new issue of Spectacle. I felt a strange sadness at the end of the story, because Jack (seen here in his youth with Clyde Beatty) no doubt has the goods on so many things he will likely never reveal. Not that he should. He only hints at dissatisfaction, says he quit after five years, feeling “burnt out.” He did return now and then over the years free lancing for the Felds. I suppose a good press man is by nature too upbeat to feel very good about producing a tell-all tome. In his amiably entertaining book, This Way to the Big Show, the great Dexter Fellows wrote a chapter “The Customer Is Always Wrong,” full of candor concerning all manner of circus rackets against customers. Is That All There Is, My Friend? As for Mr. Irvin, I’d love to know, for example, whether it was Jack who dropped Feld's name dozens of times in some of the program magazine articles, or if he was under orders from a driven megalomaniac out to upstage even Barnum's legacy? It’s not a nice question to ask, but oh-so-intriguing a story yet to be uncovered, and, judging by the enormously successful press campaign that built up Irvin Feld as the ultimate great hands-on circus boss (based on historical fictions landing in the pages of Variety), Jack on this count alone must at least share high honors with Feld colleagues as a master spinmaster. This does not however diminish my my grave misgivings over the rearrangement of circus history (doing great harm to, among others, Art Concello), likely ordered by the Felds, forever insecure under their own skins ... On the upshine, we can thank Jack for the creation in 1969 of the stirring Ringling sign off, "May all your days be circus days!" which director Richard Barstow set to music and ringmaster Harold Ronk sang. Jack calls this contribution his "fifteen minutes of circus fame." Now, there's a crack flackmaster at the top of his game ...
Danger in the bed sheets: Another sad tale of fabric aerialists (or aerial dancers) falling to the ground. This from Moscow, where Yulia Volkova and her husband-partner Alexander during Nulikin Old Circus rehearsals (sans mechanics) took a terrible fall while "wrapping their limbs in long swaths of cloth." Both were hospitalized with serious injuries ... In recent years, why so many other such mishaps on the fabrics? My guess is that some of these artists are too much into their “choreography,” too much into ballet, and thus lose practical contact with the inherent danger of aerial work ... End Ring Chills: Trainer Christian Walliser, 28, at Pagel’s Dinner Circus in Germany close to death after being mauled by three tigers ... Reality remains the circus’s reigning feature. I wish a fine and full recovery for all of these fearless, very real, performers ...
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