Big Apple Circus Gets Up Close and Personal
- The Boston Globe
- Joanna Weiss
- 07 Apr 2009
With its compact tent on City Hall Plaza, the Big Apple Circus isn't going to be the loudest, looniest, or most death-defying show in town. What makes it strong - and often superior - is its intimacy: a signature clown, a close view of the action, a live band that always makes the show feel immediate and alive.
This year's theme, "Play On," is a reference to the Shakespeare line about music, and a perfect way to showcase the band's interaction with the performers. Sarah Schwarz begins her tight wire routine by plucking the wire like a guitar string. A sound effect comes from the electric guitar, the shtick continues, and eventually, the guitarist gets a solo of his own.
The band also joins clown Glen Heroy in a fun audience-participation routine involving conducting, cute kids, and one hapless adult. (Oh, and a warning to adults: Don't bury your head in your cellphone during the show, especially if you're sitting in the front row. One woman in the audience Sunday afternoon, texting away, suddenly found herself pulled onstage, where she reluctantly danced with clowns. Her kids looked thrilled, but she didn't.)
There's really no reason to text during this show, especially if horses are whizzing by your face at high speed. Dogs bolt around the circular stage as well, in a routine that features animals rescued from shelters, and devolves fairly quickly into amusing chaos.
Speed, though, has little to do with entertainment value. Some of the most fascinating acts are simple and slow, from Schwarz's tight wire act - the smile on her face when she lands a move is priceless - to Guiming Meng's strange and spellbinding routine in which he balances increasingly large Chinese jars on his head. The Nanjing Duo combines supernatural balancing with lovely ballet, and Regina Dobrovitskaya's trapeze act opens the show on the right breathtaking note.
Twins Jake and Marty LaSalle seem to have great fun with their juggling routine, though it's hard to take your eyes off their identical faces. And clown Mark Gindick, with large glasses and feigned innocence, more than holds his own alongside Barry Lubin's iconic Grandma.
There are a few moments when the momentum slows or the focus shifts to the wrong thing. The Russian-based Rodion Troupe's act, involving flips on a 5-inch-wide bar, gets overshadowed by the performers' costumes, which are a weird combination of medieval and space-age, complete with flowing white capes that are later mocked by the clowns.
And while mime Olivier Taquin does impressive work as a giant toy - at the start of his routine, the room echoes with the sound of kids asking, "Is he real?" - the act goes on a little too long, and the kids are fidgeting by the end.
Some previous Big Apple seasons have ended with large groups of acrobats from China hurling themselves through the air in dizzying routines. In comparison, the Flying Cortes' four-person trapeze act feels like something of an anticlimax. Still, there's something to be said for the intimacy of it: Just watching the acrobats prepare for their leaps, adjusting their hands and feet just so, is a lesson in athleticism, laced with drama - something the Big Apple Circus always seems to deliver. 