Big Apple Circus Review: A Show that will bend over backwards for you
If confetti supplies have plummeted, if Manhattan is now experiencing a sequin shortage, a tent in the southwest corner of Lincoln Center can be blamed. Yes the Big Apple circus has returned and in just over a month New York will shine brighter.
In recent years, a return has been less certain. In 2016, after nearly 40 years as a nonprofit, the original organization closed and filed for bankruptcy. A subsidiary of a corporate restructuring company bought it in 2017 and subsequently changed management and character several times. In 2021, it was sold again to a company that counts famed aerial photographer Nik Wallenda as a minority owner, and it became a little more deadly.
This season, Big Apple has imported the German group Circus theater Roncalli, which is especially cause for joy. Roncalli is a skilled and endearing example of this form, a company steeped in circus classics, yet able to move with the times in most, if not all, ways.
It’s sad that New York can no longer support its own circus and that the Big Apple has become an intellectual property instead of a group enmeshed in the life of the city. But there’s nothing like an aerial balancing act – or two, as is the case in “Circus Theater Roncalli: Journey to the Rainbow” – to make the audience forget all that. Besides, this is New York. Who actually comes from here? Call it sequin diplomacy.
Last weekend the mood in the tent was giddy and rapturous, with the younger spectators enjoying cotton candy and the older ones perhaps excited by the sight of at least four prestigious TV stars sitting near the ring. A clown wandered between the rows while an orchestra played playful versions of classic and popular songs.
The show proper begins with Noel Aguilar’s vibrant juggling act, which started with batons and continued with ping-pong balls. (Have you ever had a popcorn kernel in your mouth? Imagine that, but in time to the music.) The finale consisted of straw hats, thrown like Frisbees. Aguilar occasionally dropped a baton and occasionally missed a hat, which made the routine even more impressive as it showed what it took to excel.
He stood down the stage for Andrei Romanovsky’s contortionist with rubber legs, in which Romanovsky jumped rope while bent over. He was replaced by a tightrope walker (fortunately the tightrope walkers were close to the ground) and then by an acrobatics act in which the performers were dressed as members of Marie Antoinette’s court. They made way for Iryna Galenchyk and Vladyslav Drobinko, whose romantic aerial act is a marvel of power and grace. There were performances throughout by four clowns, all of whom were legitimately funny, a rarity in the circus. One, Paquin Jr., had great success with a routine that may have sacrificed a Cabbage Patch doll.
Roncalli has given up the use of live animals (a wise and respectable choice for any circus, although I do miss the Big Apple’s former dog and cat acts). But the second half began with a puzzling routine in which three performers in fur suits pretended to be trained polar bears. This was followed by a cycling act and a sequence in which three gold-painted performers balanced on each other, as if statues came to life. No less special, if much more frenetic, was Emma Phillips’ foot juggling routine, which involved making a side table and spinning a pair of antimacassars on top of her toes. A steampunk bubble routine delighted the children; a trapeze act, in which Christoph Gobet and Julian Kaiser balanced impossibly foot to foot, left their mothers gasping.
This is the gift of the circus, wherever it comes from: a glimpse of the extraordinary in the everyday, a vision of what time, tenacity and a heedless approach to muscle tension can achieve. And cotton candy too? What glitters. What a joy.
Big Apple circus
Through January 1 at Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center, Manhattan; bigapplecircus.com. Running time: 2 hours and 20 minutes.