2023 was the year that Ringling returned with The Greatest Show on Earth, its new animal-free spectacular (you can read my review here). Opening a new era for American circus, it was certainly the biggest show on Earth.
In New York City, meanwhile, the Big Apple Circus has completely revamped its traditional Christmas stand by bringing to the Lincoln Centre one of the greatest shows in Europe, Circus Theatre Roncalli.
When I reviewed the Big Apple's offering last year (read it here) the procession of solo acts had a decidedly threadbare feel. While the acts themselves were good, there was no sense of a production, no razzmatazz. It certainly didn't look like the jewel in the world's jazziest city. Nor did it look like a show celebrating its 45th birthday, surely an occasion that deserved a bit of glitz. It looked more like a forgotten attraction barely hanging in after a decade of decline and bankruptcy - which, alas, it was.
The arrival of Circus Theatre Roncalli has changed that, and turned New York's resident big top into a must-see attraction once more. Ringling's arena show may be the biggest show on Earth, but Roncalli's one-ring show is undoubtedly the brightest, filling the tent with a non-stop swirl of colour and making a trip to the circus a truly theatrical event.
The immersive experience begins outside the main tent, with an adjacent circus museum full of pictures and costumes from Roncalli's and Big Apple's history. This is something that British circuses should really invest in. The Great Yarmouth Hippodrome has had a backstage museum for the past decade, and each of the travelling shows must have a wealth of old posters, props and costumes in storage. If they were presented in a separate tent beside the big top, the circuses could earn extra revenue with a token charge to walk through circus history in the way that they used to charge visitors to see the animals in the 'zoo' after the show.
In New York you can also buy a ticket to a VIP area where you can sip wine and have your picture taken with the performers while being serenaded by Roncalli's 8-piece jazz band.
Yes, Roncalli has a band! While most circuses these days rely on recorded music with a contemporary pop feel, Roncalli has a live band, seated on a balcony above the plush red ring doors. The music is distinctly old style - including a bit of the traditional circus music Entrance of the Gladiators - and helps to transport us into a dream-like circus world.
The music goes perfectly with the costumes worn by the artists, including traditional red circus tailcoats, and a team of half a dozen Broadway-style dancers whose dresses evoke a variety of eras, from Victorian vaudeville to the royal ballrooms of 17th century France.
The show is performed on a raised circular stage with no ring curb to create a barrier between the action and the audience. It begins with Angelo, an exquisitely costumed traditional white-face clown playing a saxophone while solemnly circling the stage.
The quiet opening captures our attention before the show suddenly bursts into life.
Two more clowns descend from the ceiling in a hot air balloon and basket. While the balloon is removed from the stage, a circus train comprising a small lorry and two huge circus wagons circle the perimeter.
The opening sequence sets up the loose theme of travel, reflected in the show's title, Journey to the Rainbow.
In keeping with the theme, a contortionist performs atop what looks like a tall but narrow ship's funnel. He then folds himself in two and slides down the inside of the tube and emerges from a door in the base.
Also on the travel theme, a cyclist pedals around the inside of a basket made from wooden slats that is hoisted into the air, swinging and swaying about like a lampshade, while he rides around the basket's sloping walls with nothing but an open hole beneath him.
It's not an act I've seen before, but America's No1 ring-watcher Showbiz David reported on one in his review of the Zoppe Italian Family Circus in sunny California a couple of months back (read his review here), so maybe it's a new trick coming into fashion (or perhaps it was the same performer). David wasn't impressed by what he called a "refreshing prop in search of a payoff." And it's true that it is a one-trick act. But in Roncalli's fast-moving programme it doesn't last long. It would definitely make a change to see such an act in a UK circus instead of the ubiquitous motorcycle Globe of Death (which isn't featured in the Roncalli ring).
While Ringling fields big acts, like a crisscrossing flying trapeze and a human cannonball in its big arena spaces, Roncalli goes for more intimate music hall-style acts. Emma Philips is one of the most entertaining foot-jugglers I have seen. Dressed as a vintage showgirl with a feather in her hat (she made her own costume, too) she spins a table atop her feet while spinning a parasol in each hand.
A juggler wows with a one-handed juggling of three clubs. A tightrope walker bounces back and forth between two crossed ropes. A clown performs a comedy springboard act, flipping a teddy bear into a chair atop his head.
Elsewhere in the show, a male and female aerial routine is romantically dressed with candelabras flickering around the ring and a female vocalist singing a romantic ballad while a pianist plays a baby grand beside the ring doors, conjuring the feel of a cabaret supper club.
Just as Ringling has ditched its animals - and with them a whiff of controversy that has dogged the circus industry for decades - this is the first year that the Big Apple Circus has featured only human performers. Last year's show featured just one act with small dogs, and it looked like a token reminder of a bygone era of entertainment.
And yet, the ghost of circus past haunts the Lincoln Centre's tent this Christmas. The strangest act in the show features three performers dressed as polar bears. These aren't the big, jolly cartoon-like costume characters that lumber around the ring at Zippos Christmas Circus in London, however.
The Roncalli bears move on all-fours like real bears. Guided by a female trainer with a whip, they recreate a traditional polar bear act, standing on their hind legs on podiums and walking across a see-saw.
It looks like a dream sequence, a memory of circus as it was... and anyone who finds circuses creepy may well find it disturbing! I can't see anyone who disliked the idea of animals being 'forced to perform' enjoying this reminder of what they came to an all-human circus to avoid. But then, maybe circus directors can't help giving us a little shiver now and then. As much as the industry decries the image of cruel lion tamers and scary clowns, perhaps there is a little dark corner of the circus' heart that enjoys being sinister.
Playing to that other-worldly image of mysterious circus people, the show concludes with a bewitching bubble-blowing act by Paulo Carillon, a steampunk clown who drives into the ring in a bizarre vehicle apparently made from scrap metal that, being a former engineer, he made himself.
His moodily lit act shows the artful beauty that can be created by a clown in a tent. And then, after that spell-binding moment, everything is suddenly all light and colour again for the full-cast finale.
It's a show that truly takes us on a journey, through a multitude of moods and, alongside the completely different but in its own way just as impressive Ringling show, suggests that the American circus industry is on the upswing into a bright new era.
New Yorkers certainly seem to be lapping it up, with Roncalli's run extended by two weeks until 15 January.
