The third poodle wouldn’t join the conga line. Its fluffy co-stars pranced on their hind legs, while the third one scampered from side to side, reluctant to keep the rhythm. The poodle’s trainer coaxed and gently urged. But sometimes a dog just doesn’t want to dance.
This was at the Big Apple Circus, the annual, genial extravaganza that sets up its big-top shop in a corner of the Lincoln Center Plaza. The opening performance was on the Saturday after Election Day, the tent lit in nonpartisan red and blue. The city still felt unsettled and even here the vibes were arguably off — acrobats stumbled, jugglers dropped batons, a unicycle rider lasted barely a second on the pedals.
Vibes aside, a circus is still a circus. And a circus, however wobbly, is still a joy. There are buckets of popcorn to eat, light-up toys to wave, clowns to cheer. If this year’s acts are not exactly death defying, some of us have enough to worry about these days and may welcome the presence of a net, a mat. A soft place to land, spangles for days and nachos covered in Day-Glo orange cheese, that’s escapism enough.
The circus’s theme this year is Hometown Playground. Whether the two-dozen or so performers and musicians actually call New York home is left unaddressed, but several of them are costumed as pizza rats (well, two pizza rats, one gamine pizza mouse), which is perhaps the next best thing.
In a relatively brisk two hours, the show, which does without a ring master or mistress, visits a few tourist sites — Central Park, Coney Island, Harlem. Other acts are given vague tie-ins to the five boroughs. An acrobat performs an upside-down routine dressed as a construction worker. (Upside-down they don’t cat call.) He is followed by a trio on the Russian swing apparatus, also dressed as construction workers, which suggests certain imaginative limits. The poodles, all shelter rescues, arrive in a checkered cab. A couple of them are dressed as Ziegfeld girls.
A few acts are the equal of those offered in past years, like Antoly Brazzan’s precarious turn on the Wheel of Destiny, a rotating apparatus that operates like a midair human hamster wheel. At one point, climbing on the outside of the wheel, Brazzan seemed to slip, which is fun if you enjoy a heart attack with your cotton candy. (Brazzan, the show’s M.V.P., anchors the Russian swing and is the catcher in the concluding trapeze act.)
There is also an elegant paired aerial act performed by Alex and Daniela Bryant and a supremely goofy and deeply unhygienic routine advertised as “Human Fountains.” The audience volunteer chosen for that one deserves much applause and a free Paxlovid prescription. Others felt less breathtaking — a slack wire, however challenging, is no substitute for a high one — or very slightly out of date, like a juggling routine with the performers dressed as two Barbies and a Ken, which would have killed last year.
The New York of checkered cabs and Ziegfeld girls is long gone. Harlem jazz clubs, where the slack wire act is set, are few on the ground now. (Construction? That’s eternal.) Big Apple Circus’s exercise in nostalgia feel paler than the real city just beyond the tent. But then the trapeze starts to swing and the spine tingles. Sometimes messy, sometimes thrilling, always caramel corn sweet, the show is a fine diversion for a fall afternoon. Even a jaded New Yorker can’t say no to that. A jaded poodle? Maybe.
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