Woke war on Christmas! Review of Big Apple Circus, Hometown Playground

Has Christmas gone out of fashion? In London's Winter Wonderland, Zippos' seasonal show is the distinctly un-Christmassy (but distinctly classy) Candyland - read my review here. Well, I guess the venue is 'Winter' Wonderland, not Christmas Wonderland.

Over the pond, meanwhile, Big Apple Circus has also dodged the Yuletide spirit to present Hometown Playground, themed not around Santa's workshop but around the five boroughs of New York.

I can hear the splutters of outrage from the gammons on the right: "Woke war on Christmas! We're not allowed to celebrate Christmas anymore!"

These would be the same people who leave Trip Advisor comments like, "It's not a circus without animals!" Despite the fact that  - news flash! - Hometown Playground includes a poodle act. Yes, animals in the circus. How un-woke is that?? 

Personally, the canine capers of the Cartoon Poodles left me a little cold. While I've championed circus animals in the past, I feel like we closed that chapter of big top history several years ago and it's time to move on. A slick modern, all-human circus just looks better to me these days - the shows certainly look like they're doing better at the box office without all that 'cruel circus' baggage - and the inclusion of the dogs in the Big Apple tent feels like a relic from a bygone age. Especially after the resounding success of last year's all-human Big Apple show, which was provided in collaboration with Circus Theatre Roncalli - read my review here.

Maybe I'm just too woke.

But hey, the circus was woke before our grandparents were born. The big top was diverse and inclusive before anyone else was. It's always been performed by absolutely everyone for absolutely everyone, and not everyone celebrates Christmas, so why exclude them from a wintertime night out?

Personally, I'm no Scrooge. I actually put up a Christmas decoration this year (just the one, but it's on my front door, so not like I'm hiding it). But I'm not fussed about a lack of tinsel in the circus as long as it's a good show - and Big Apple has served up a (forgive me!) cracker this year.

My favourite act is Alex Petrov who does an upside down walk (pictured above). I guess he's held on by wires rather than magnetic shoes or Spider-Man powers, but he really does look like a human fly as he bounces a ball on his upside down floor, and tries to drink water - which pours down to the real floor.

Speaking of water, America's Got Talent winners the three Human Fountains make a hilarious act out of drinking water and spitting it out.

Another highlight is the slick and acrobatic three-way juggling of the Zsilak Trio Jugglers in their colourful 1960s-style costumes (below).

There are big acts on the bill, too. Antoly Huaman Brazzan is a thriller on the Wheel of Destiny (is that the new woke name for the Wheel of Death?). When he trips on his skipping rope and nearly falls from the top of the huge rotating wheel he draws gasps and screams from an audience on the edge of its seats. He then gets massive cheers when he skips not just successfully but with aplomb, leaping high into the roof of the tent as the wheel revolves.

A hot jazz soundtrack adds to Brazzan's energetic performance. It's the same sort of music they're using at Zippos this year, hot jazz clearly being in fashion if Christmas music ain't.

A Russian swing act, hurling its performers high into a sail-like safety net is similarly impressive, as is the climatic flying trapeze act by the Flying Poemas. Again, an exciting soundtrack adds, well, excitement, with the audience clapping along as the daring young men somersault between the swings.

As the show takes us around New York from Coney Island, where we find ace pick-pocket Michael Halvarson, to Harlem, where Mihret Mekonnen rides a unicycle on the slack wire, a circular gauze curtain is periodically lowered to fully enclose the stage. New York street images of road signs and neon signs are projected onto the gauze in a very pleasing visual effect.

The gauze is also used to surround aerial globe artist Sofia Petrov in the bewitching illusion of falling snow. 

Well, it wouldn't be New York at Christmas without snow - even if the snow falls without a hint of Christmas music.

Hometown Playground is at the Lincoln Centre until 5 January.

 

Who will fill their circus shoes? RIP Phillip Gandey, John Haze, Gerry Cottle and Nell Gifford

It was a shock this week to hear of the death of Phillip Gandey (pictured above with the cast of Gandeys Circus) at the tragically young age of 67.

When I interviewed Gandey for The Stage in 2020, he was a man full of life. Having just reopened three big tops in Butlins holiday centres, after lockdown restrictions were lifted, his one regret was that he didn't have his usual "five or six" shows simultaneously running in locations from the Edinburgh Festival to the Far and Middle East.

Gandey was born into the circus world. A clown aged three, and a knife-thrower at 11, he inherited his father's circus and became the world's youngest circus director at 17.

With his wife, Carol, he established Gandey World Class Productions as the UK's premier exporter of circus shows. When Gandeys Circus stopped using animals in the early 1990s, Gandey became one of the industry's great innovators, seeking fresh ideas to fill the gap left by big cats and elephants.

He brought a Chinese troupe of acrobats to the UK and created the Chinese State Circus, which became one of the country's most successful touring shows. He also created the cabaret-style Lady Boys of Bangkok, Cirque Surreal, Spirit of the Horse and the fundraising Circus Starr (which you can read about here).

One of his newest creations, the circus-on-ice show Snow Storm 3 is currently delighting audiences at the Trafford Centre in Manchester. His Great Circus of Europe, meanwhile, has toured Hong Kong, Singapore, and is currently in the Arab Emirates.

Gandey's passing leaves a huge hole in the circus world, and follows the loss of another great British showman, John Haze, who died in April this year at almost exactly the same young age.

Haze, like Gandey, was both artistic director and businessman, creating the long-running success story the Circus of Horrors and currently the UK's biggest big top show, Circus Extreme (read my review here).

Sadly, it was only a couple of years ago that both Haze and Gandey were paying tribute to another great showman, and a collaborator with both of them, Gerry Cottle, probably the best-known name in UK circus since the 1970s, who died in January 2021, aged 75.

Circus Mania author Douglas McPherson
with Gerry Cottle (left) and John Haze.

It was not long before that, that the circus world was shocked by the loss to cancer of Nell Gifford, aged just 46. (Read her story here)

Nell Gifford

In the space of four years, Britain has lost four of the most important circus impresarios of modern times. Each was an innovator and energiser, breathing new life into a world of big top and circus ring that was created in London by Philip Astley more than 250 years ago. 

They formed a generation of circus-producing talent fit to be remembered alongside their predecessors in earlier eras: Billy Smart, the Chipperfields, Bertram Mills, Lord Sanger and Astley himself. 

Like four king poles, Gandey, Haze, Cottle and Gifford lifted the tent of British circus high. But with their departure, the big top will not fall.

Although all four were driving forces and figureheads, they were not one-person companies. Each left behind a creative team and/or family members to carry on their legacy. Giffords Circus, the Circus of Horrors and Circus Extreme continue to tour without their creators and the many shows of Phillip Gandey will doubtless do likewise, capably overseen by Carol Gandey and their daughters.

We still have another of our greatest showmen, Martin 'Zippo' Burton, whose twin shows in Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland this Christmas reveal the Zippos brand to be at the top of its game.

And a new generation of circus blood is rising, inspired by the generation that came before. People like Tracy Jones who ran away with the circus when she was 15 and learned her craft having knives thrown at her by Phillip Gandey himself. Jones travelled the world with Gandeys Circus, an apprenticeship that stood her in good stead to start her own show, Circus Funtasia, which is this year celebrating its 10th anniversary.

Also on the ascent are Paul and Irina Archer who spent many years working with Haze in behind-the-scenes roles on the Moscow State Circus and Circus Extreme before launching their own colourful and contemporary-styled big top show Circus Cortex two years ago. The show is currently starring at the indoor Kingdom of Winter attraction at ExCel London. 

Around the country, Planet Circus, Circus Zyair and Big Kid Circus are providing top drawer circus entertainment to big audiences in what feels like a thriving scene.

It's easy to see the passing of giants like Phillip Gandey, Haze, Cottle and Gifford as the end of an era. But in the circus, there are no ends. The show will always go on. And as much as they will be missed, I'm sure that Gandey, Haze, Cottle and Gifford would want it no other way.

 

Review: Cirque Berserk, Winter Wonderland, Hyde Park, 2023

 

If you've been to Zippos Christmas Show (read my review here) you might have glimpsed a Globe of Death behind the curtains and wondered why it wasn't used. Well, the Globe is for Zippos' other show, Cirque Berserk, which is playing three shows each evening in the same venue. Yep, there are SIX circus performances every day at Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland.

Cirque Berserk was designed to be a high-octane theatre show (although it works perfectly well in the in-the-round setting of the big top). It has a completely different aesthetic to Zippos traditional circus style and the tent is completely redecorated between afternoon and evening - or, rather, completely stripped out to create the black box style backdrop associated with 'cirque'-style shows.

Gone are the Christmas lights that cover the king poles in the Christmas show. Gone is the ring curb, removing all barriers between audience and action. The ring doors (curtains) are pulled back, leaving the Globe of Death visible in the background at all times.

Gone, too, are the cheery Christmas songs, replaced by a percussion-driven contemporary soundtrack. Moody lighting bathes the edge-less performing area in hazy shades of blue, purple and pink.

The line-up of acts is also completely different.

What Berserk has in common with the Christmas Show is the amount of high quality circus stunts it packs into its compact, fat-free 45-minute running time, and the slickness with which it transitions between the acts, leaving not a second's pause in the action.

The acts in fact overlap, with one set of performers arriving as another leaves.

The show begins with an energetic display of overhead bar gymnastics. The routine is best viewed from the side where you can really see the guys and gal swinging around the bars.

No sooner have the gymnasts dropped to the ground and begun to collapse their apparatus, than a motorcyclist roars into view above them, with a trapeze artist performing on a cradle beneath him. The high wire artists' most crowd-wowing stunt sees biker and trapeze artist revolving around the wire, with him passing under it as she swings over it.

When the bike backs out of sight, Ludvik Novotny is already atop a platform centre stage, ready to impress with his rola-rola routine.

Another of the show's seamless transitions is achieved by a two-man balancing act (pictured above) performing in part atop a ramp and platforms that will be used by the BMX stunt bike trio that follow them.

The balancers conclude their act with a neat fall from a human pyramid to a pair of forward rolls and exit via an aisle through the audience as the BMXers ride into the ring behind them.

The highlight of the BMX routine sees a female performer lie in a star shape on the floor while a rider, standing up on one wheel, hops his bike around and over her, missing her limbs by inches.

It's a stunt reminiscent of an elephant stepping over their trainer's assistant in the world of circus past, and is one of those apparently dicing with death circus moments that really ramps up the tension in an audience.

Is the danger to the woman in this stunt really greater than that of the aerial artists performing on silks and chains elsewhere in the show? Or the daredevil motorcyclists circling inside the Globe of Death? It's hard for the audience to judge, but I would argue that it feels greater. We don't have the experience of being up on the silk while possessing the skill those artists have, and part of their job is making it look easy, rather than precarious. But we can imagine how it would feel to trust your safety to a bloke on a bike and how it would feel if his wheel and weight accidentally landed on your arm, or your stomach... or your head. 

I wouldn't like to lie there, put it that way - and it's that empathic reaction that really connects the performance to the audience.

On a lighter note, the tall Whimmy Walker and the 3-foot-tall Paulo Dos Santos make a great clown duo, entering on a bouncy motorcycle and a tiny bike. Their tramp-style costumes and absence of traditional clown make-up fit perfectly with the contemporary cirque style while they mix juggling skills with traditional slapstick. Paulo is a sometime Ringling star and Whimmy's great-great-grandfather clowned for Queen Victoria, so they both know exactly what they're doing.

Elsewhere in the show is a crossbow act and a couple of aerial routines with three artists in the air at the same time, the central performer on chains or hanging from her hair, while the other two perform on silks to either side of her. The result is much stronger visually than having just one aerialist in the ring, which is often the case with such acts.

The shaven-headed Alexandr Shpilevoy displays masterful control in an elegant, dramatic and accomplished Cyr wheel act. The act ends with him backing away into the shadows while his hoop continues to spin alone in the spotlight. It's a very striking visual image.

The show concludes with the ever-lurking Globe of Death being brought forward into the centre of the ring.

As I said in my review of Planet Circus (which you can read here), the Globe is not my favourite stunt. The fact that EVERY circus seems to end with one has made it too commonplace for my liking.

The one at Berserk is well lit, however, and looks good close-up from front row. The show also adds a couple of twists. A ballerina stands in the centre of the cage and lets one of the motorcyclists snatch a feather from her hand as the bikes revolve around her. Then, when the stunt riders have left, Paulo Dos Santos enters the globe on a miniature motorbike and roars around the inside while the rest of the company come out to take a bow.

It's a nice end to a fast-flowing show that crams 90 minutes worth of acts into 45 and delivers outstanding value for money. Is it better or worse than Zippos Christmas Show in the afternoon? The two shows are as different as apples and oranges and equally outstanding. Any circus fan heading for Hyde Park this winter would miss out if they didn't see both.

Cirque Berserk has shows at 18:00, 19:30 and 21:00 each day except Christmas Day until 31 December.

Review: Zippos Christmas Circus, Winter Wonderland, Hyde Park, 2023

Christmas adds its own magic to any form of entertainment, from concerts to romcoms, and the circus is no exception. Zippos Christmas Show, nestled within Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland, covers its usual fun for all the family with a snowfall of all the expected Yuletide delights: Snowballs, dancers in Santa hats, giant polar bear costumes, feel-good Christmas songs like Jingle Bells and Santa Claus is Coming To Town, clowns dressed as elves and even a climatic appearance by an enormous inflatable Father Christmas. 

To walk into any big top is a magical experience, a gateway to another world, but with king poles draped in frosty silver Christmas lights, and a ring backdrop of scenery marked Elf Workshop and Reindeer House, the tent becomes a grotto - you get your money's worth just by walking in! 

But London's favourite circus delivers more than Christmas wrapping and the Hyde Park edition is more than a sideshow to the surrounding Winter Wonderland. Zippos recently became the UK's first tenting circus to be awarded the Big Top Label - the quality certificate of European circuses - and it packs more genuine circus action into a fast-moving 45 minute running time than most deliver in a full-length show.

Immediately following the ensemble opening spectacular, football juggler Rafael de Carlos sets the bar high. The climax of his act sees him drop a ball from the back of his neck, give it a backwards kick with his heel onto the top of his head and from there onto the top of a ball already spinning on one finger, so he has two balls spinning one on top of each other.

The charismatic La Loka puts the circus into a jazzy song and dance routine by flipping onto her hands and performing an upside down tap dance. 

Speaking of flipping, the Garcia Sisters put on a stylish display of tumbling, with big squashy gymnastics balls as props. In the climax of their routine, they wow the audience by taking turns to perform a line of continuous forward flips and back flips while holding the balls above their heads and using them as springboards for each flip.

The routine begins with one of the sisters performing high in the air on a trapeze hoop before descending to the ground for the gym ball routine. It's an example not just of the versatility of circus stars but of how to seamlessly transition a show between aerial and ground routines.

Another example of a good transition is clown duo Mr N and Timoni coming on to 'clean up' the stage with a mop and bucket skit after the bubble blowing act of Joel Farias. Maybe one of them actually was mopping up some sticky liquid spillage at the back while the other came to the front and entertained the crowd with the head falling off his mop, allowing the removal of props while the show continued without a pause.

Vlad and Viktoria blend ground-based acrobalance with aerial straps (performed solo and as a duo) in an engrossing and highly skilled acrobatic ballet set to suitably solemn music.

In contrasting mood is the climatic skipping and tumbling act of the 11-strong Mongolian Warriors. Their tricks include a three-man-pyramid that jumps over the rope as one on one turn of the rope, with the top man performing a solo somersault above the rope on the next turn.

The sheer number of performers in the Warriors' troupe is important. A circus ring is a big space under a high roof and on many shows a succession of solo acts can appear dwarfed by it, making the bill as a whole look sparse and threadbare, even if the individual acts are good. Lighting effects often amplify the emptiness of the space, rather than reduce it.

A ring full of performers always looks better, giving the impression of a big production. The Mongolian Warriors fill the ring with life and colour and also considerably swell the number of people in the ring during the opening and closing ensemble numbers, adding to the party mood. 

Elsewhere in the show, the four dancers in their sparkling Christmas dresses, provide a colourful (but not distracting) backdrop to the tumbling of the Garcia Sisters - and serve a purpose, rolling the gym balls back to the performers.

At other points, the clowns and ringmaster Chris Barltrop remain in view at the back of the stage during the acts, reacting to the action - and subtly directing the attention and reactions of the audience. The clowns also lead the giant polar bears around. It all adds to the appearance of a busy ring and a big company, and turns a string of acts into a cohesive show.

The result is not only thoroughly entertaining but a masterclass in how to produce a traditional circus.

 

Zippos Christmas Circus is performing three shows a day at 13:00, 14:30 and 16:00 until 1 January.

 

Circus Extreme coming to Glasgow - Review of Britain's biggest and best circus

It has been said that circuses thrive in a recession. They offer a comparatively inexpensive night out and, since they come to your town, they bring little of the travel and parking problems/expenses associated with many other forms of entertainment. When times are hard, though, they have to provide value for money and plenty of bang for your buck.

Circus Extreme, from the producers of the Circus of Horrors and Continental Circus Berlin, does both in spades. Although ringside seats are advertised at £32, concessions mean you can get into Britain's biggest big top for as little as £9 - and for that you will will see what I reckon must be Britain's most spectacular circus in terms of the number of thrilling acts.

The finale is actually the most stunning act I have seen in a big top. The Globe of Death, in which motorcyclists race around inside a spherical cage, is in itself a far from unique act and in fact has become somewhat passe - you can see one in many big tops this year. Even the fact that the Circus Extreme globe splits into two hemispheres, with bikes circling both the top and bottom halves is not a unique innovation. Zippos and Santus have globes that do the same trick this year.

What makes Circus Extreme stand out is the way the stunt riders jump Evel Kneivel-style over the globe at the routine's climax. The bikes come roaring in through the front of the tent, hit a ramp and leap into the very top of the roof space, crossing the whole ring and the towering globe at its centre, before landing on an inflatable ramp and careering out through the back doors.

As the bikes fly through the air, the riders leave their mounts - bodies and legs flying high above their machines - hanging on to just the handlebars or saddles. The last two riders, following each other in quick succession, perform death-defying somersaults above the globe, before landing safely.

Prior to this act, the most high-flying daredevilry that I have seen in a circus is performers taking flight from a Russian swing - an act that can make the flying trapeze look tame. The stunt riders go every bit as high, if not higher, than a Russian swing troupe, however, and the fact that they are on motorbikes (and in an indoor venue) adds its own high-octane thrill. 

The motorcycle leaps at Circus Extreme are worth the ticket price alone, but there are plenty of other dramatic stunts to witness.

Given its thrilling finale, the show I saw actually got off to a dull start with a singer (never an act that looks especially at home in a circus) performing a ballad that might be titled Better Days Are Coming. It appears to be about moving on from the Covid years, and as a group of performers file in behind the singer, dressed as policemen and NHS workers, holding signs that proclaim 'Hope' and 'Freedom', the message seems a bit heavy handed. Do we even  want to be reminded, during what is supposed to be a night of escapism?

Despite the ballad's apparently upbeat message, I found the music rather gloomy - although I've since been told that the singer had lost her voice on that occasion and had to sing in a lower register than normal. I'm assured the song is usually performed in a joyous way.

The show quickly moves on, however, into a succession of skilled acts, beginning with a male and female rollerskating duo.

Soon after, the male and female Ariel Duo Polischuk literally get the bit between their teeth. She hangs upside down with her jaws clamped around a short chain from which her revolving partner is also hanging from his teeth.

This is the sort of spectacle that circus should be about: things that you can't quite believe you're seeing. And while all circus skills are impressively beyond the capability of those of us watching at ringside, shows also need to find new and unique spectacles that we can't see at every circus that comes to town.

Sometimes the newness can be in the way an act is dressed. The trench-coat-clad Tony Garcia, for example, gets a gasp from the audience when he fires up an impressively large flame-thrower. He then performs an inverted juggling routine, bouncing countless balls on the roof of a car that he has set fire to. The skill is in the juggling, but it's the car and the flames licking around his boots that make the act into something special.

Another act improved immeasurably by the way it is staged involves Laura Miller on an aerial hoop who is periodically lowered into a glass tank of water, where she turns underwater somersaults like a mermaid. The climax to her routine sees her drop with heart-stopping speed into what has become a vat of fire.

Henry the Clown performs a number of silent routines throughout the programme, including a comedy waiter skit, but it's as part of a high-wire troupe, fresh from the Monte Carlo Circus Festival, that he really shines: riding a unicycle on the wire, 12 metres up, with another performer standing on his shoulders, juggling.

Henry has set a world record for skipping on the wire, with 211 skips in 60 seconds, but since that's three skips a second, the rope was moving too fast for me to count how many he managed on this occasion! Being a clown, Henry also did a cartoonish pretend fall - revolving under the wire and ending up back on top again! Sometimes the simple tricks have the most impact. A bit like the motorcycle leaps of the finale, really. Bikes leaping across the ring is a simple concept - but you won't see anything like it in most other circus tents - and it's those one-off experiences that have brought the punters to the circus for 250 years.

Although the Circus Extreme big top can hold a reported 3000 people, the circus is selling only 1000 seats, so Covid-nervous patrons won't have to fear being crammed together. Director John Haze reports strong ticket sales in each of the cities where Circus Extreme is playing for up to three weeks at a time - the longer than usual stays allowing the show to benefit from word-of-mouth sales. And deservedly so, because it's unlikely that any other British show is fielding such a strong bill this year.

For Circus Extreme tour dates, click here.

For a behind-the-scenes journey through the contemporary circus scene, with reviews of circuses of all types, both traditional and modern, plus interviews with big top owners and performers from clowns and sword-swallowers to trapeze artists and tiger trainers, read Circus Mania - The Ultimate Book for Anyone Who Dreamed of Running Away with the Circus!

Click here to read the 5-star reviews on Amazon.

 

The Vegan Agenda - Why Circuses Were Just The Thin Edge of the Wedge

Warning from the big top

For decades now, campaigners such as ADI (Animal Defenders International) and Peta (People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals) have been saying that circus animals are cruelly treated. And it's worked. Animals have been gradually squeezed out of the circus ring on both sides of the Atlantic by local legislation that prevented circuses operating in prime municipally owned venues and, increasingly, national bans, such as the one has has this month come into force in Scotland.

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus, the self-proclaimed Greatest Show on Earth and arguably most iconic circus in the world, was forced to close after more than a century because of such legislation.

The evidence does not support these bans. In 2007, the UK government-commissioned Radford report found circuses were as capable of meeting their animals' needs as zoos or other captive environments. Since 2012, a licensing scheme has regulated the use of wild animals in circuses and has produced no evidence of mistreatment.

The government has announced, however, that when the licensing scheme expires it will not be extended, bringing in a ban by default.

Why are circus animals being banned if there's no evidence that they are intrinsically cruel?

Martin Burton

When I interviewed Zippos owner Martin Burton for my book Circus Mania he explained that the campaigners were motivated by a deeper agenda: they didn't believe people should even keep pets or eat meat.

At the time, I confess that I didn't fully connect the dots. Yes, I thought, anti-circus campaigners may well be anti-vivisectionists and vegetarians and so on... but I couldn't see that side of their agenda catching on with the wider public. It's one thing to support a campaign against perceived or alleged cruelty (whether proven or just suggested) another to turn your back on meat and pets.

In the last couple of years, however, the mass media push for veganism has been impossible to miss. You can't open a newspaper or magazine without reading about a new meat-free business or recipes for meat-free meals.

Today the circus,
Tommorow...?

Protests against fast food restaurants, supermarkets and local butchers are becoming as familiar as the demonstrations that were once confined to circuses. I have seen full-page national newspaper adverts against milk production, which shows how well-funded and/or connected the vegan lobby is.

The anti-circus campaigners, meanwhile, are revealing their wider hand. At the foot of a press release that came my way today, ADI outlined its mission:

Active worldwide to end the suffering of animals: animals in entertainment – film, television, advertising, circuses, and sport or leisure; animals used for food or fur; protection of wildlife and the environment; trade in animals; zoos, pets, entertainment, and laboratories.

Note the words "food" and "pets" - there for all to see.

It's very similar to Peta's slogan, as displayed on its website:

ANIMALS ARE NOT OURSto eat, wear, experiment on, use forentertainment or abuse in any other way

The ADI press release was in support of a film called Anima, in which representatives from 12 religions talk about changing our attitudes to meat.

According to one of the participants, Rabbi Singer: “Our belief in Judaism is that God never actually meant us to eat animals,” explaining “In the Garden of Eden, God shows us the fruit of the trees, the grass in the fields, and says ‘You may have any of this to eat.’ But God never mentioned animals.”

ADI president Jan Creamer, meanwhile, has this to say: “Millions of people across the world draw their beliefs and perceptions about the other species who share our planet, from their faith. There has never been a more important time to challenge themisunderstandings which have, in the past, been used to justify exploitation of animals. As Dr Lo Sprague says in ANIMA, every religion has compassion as part of its mandate. It is time to mobilize that.”


The film appears to say nothing about circuses, but the fact it is being promoted by ADI proves what the circus industry has been telling us all along: that the massive fundraising campaigns built around 'circus cruelty' were never really about circus cruelty at all, just part of a wider agenda.

As the post-circus campaign for worldwide veganism unfolds around us, it's a shame the warnings from the big top mostly fell on deaf ears.

Aerialist by Rebecca Truman - Book Review

Rebecca Truman is the Grande Dame of aerial. “Cut me in half and I will have aerialist written all the way through,” she writes in this engrossing memoir.

In 1988, Truman founded Skinning the Cat, a pioneering all-woman trapeze troupe that performed principally at outdoor events throughout Britain and Europe, but also in circus tents and theatres. Truman was star, costumer, artistic director, rigger, truck driver... in fact, she did pretty much everything. Her reluctance or inability to delegate responsibility led to an punishing schedule that eventually brought her to the point of breakdown.

“My years as an aerialist are divided into before and after the falls,” she writes on the first page. “Those accidents changed everything. Before the falls I was running wild and fulfilling my fantasies. Afterwards, it became all too real.”

The Silver Tree rig

When Truman’s colleague Lou plunges head-first to a concrete floor, the dangers of trapeze are brought violently home to the reader. Was Lou’s accident Truman’s responsibility for running an un-funded company too close to the brink of exhaustion? When Truman subsequently breaks an ankle (that never heals properly) was it her fault for bringing a still-recovering Lou back to work too soon, or for not training her sufficiently on the lunge that would have prevented Truman’s accident?

Those are the questions that haunt her as company leader. But the show always goes on. Forced to hobble on stage on crutches, Truman creates a character that makes the crutch part of her act. In the air, the trapeze frees her from her disability.

Everyone in the circus has a colourful story to tell, but few can tell their own tale as well as Truman. In this gripping journey into the life and mind of a trapeze artist, Truman writes with all the evocative colour and underlying precision of the shows she describes

With a novelist’s eye for detail, she brilliantly evokes the glitter and grit of her surroundings at art school, in training gyms, in lorries and caravans, and freezing cold offices in derelict former woollen mills.

For students of the trapeze, Aerialist is essential reading. There’s an insider’s manual worth of detail on every aspect of how to run and rig a show, down to how to remove a cobblestone from a town square in order to drive in a stake to anchor the rig - or, if that doesn’t work, anchor it from a builder’s skip.

Chameleon rig

But this is also the story of a life. From a bohemian childhood scarred by sexual abuse by her grandfather, and the death of her father when she was young, to the nervous breakdown when all those unresolved issues eventually caught up with her, Truman reveals how her career on the trapeze was driven by the desire to escape.

Her narrative is broken up and enriched by the accounts of her mother, company members and, memorably, Zippos founder Martin Burton who recalls asking the Arts Council for funding in the days when circus wasn’t recognised as an art form. Sitting in opulent offices full of furniture he reckoned was worth more than his entire circus, he was told, “If we had any money we’d give it to you.”

Since they claimed not to have the money, he decided to steal the reception desk - a plan that failed when he couldn’t get it through the revolving doors.

Many years later, when Burton was appointed chairman of the Arts Council's Circus Advisory Committee, he told them, “You obviously don’t remember the last time I was here.” “Yes we do,” they said, “which is why the desk is screwed down.”

The text is also peppered with information boxes that provide a glossary of trapeze moves and equipment - Skinning the Cat takes its name from an aerial manoeuvre - plus some poems by Truman that offer insights into an aerialist’s connection to her work that mere prose couldn’t quite capture.

It all adds up to a thrilling read that sits with the best circus memoirs, such as Nell Gifford’s Gifford’s Circus - The First Ten Years (and Josser, written as Nell Stroud) and Gerry Cottle’s Confessions of a Showman.

Click here to order Aerialist by Rebecca Truman from Amazon.

See also: 10 Books for Circus250!

New plaque marks site of the first circus

2018 is the 250th anniversary of the very first circus, and to mark the occasion, Lambeth Residents Association have installed a blue plaque as close as possible to the site of the very first ring, which was established by Philip Astley, the Father of the Circus, in 1768.

Chris Barltrop as Philp Astley

The plaque was unveiled on Easter Monday by ringmaster and circus historian Chris Barltrop, who was dressed as Astley and added to the celebrations by performing his one man play The Audacious Mr Astley.

Astley, of course, was a horseman, famed for brandishing his sword while standing atop of a galloping horse, and so there were naturally horses on hand, too, ridden by the Khadikov Riders from Zippos circus, which is currently resident in Blackheath.

The plaque, which also commemorates Astley's wife Patty, herself a horsewoman who performed in his shows, is located at Cornwall Road, in Waterloo. The unveiling was followed by a residents' street party.

For details of where Chris Barltrop will be performing The Audacious Mr Astley in future, visit www.centreforcircusculture.eu

For 15 Facts about Philip Astley, the Father of the Circus, click here.

The Khadikov Riders

Zippos rides into 2018!

A image to gladden the hearts of circus fans! The Khadikov Riders are among the stars of Zippos' new show Legacy, which opens in Blackheath, London on March 29, as the first stop on its 2018 tour. 

Also on the bill are Cuban acrobats the Hermansito Troupe, clown Totti Alexis, the legendary Norman Barrett MBE and his famous budgies, and Brazilian aerialist Alex Michael, who will be performing 30ft above the ring with no safety wires or net!

Book your seats on 0871 210 2100.

Scotland and Ireland ban wild animals from the big top as the traditional circus slowly disappears

Thomas Chipperfield presents the last big cats
to grace Peter Jolly's Circus, in 2014

“I remember the elephants - just.” Those are the words with which I began Circus Mania. From the first line there was a whiff of nostalgia about my survey of the circus world, even though the focus was not on the history of the big top but a journey through the circus scene as it exists today. The Mail on Sunday called the book “A brilliant account of a vanishing art form.” Naturally I was pleased to use the quote in publicity, although some circus aficianados objected to the word “vanishing”. Surely, they argued, the contemporary circus scene is flourishing? A ‘circus hub’ at the Edinburgh Festival and ‘national’ status for the former training school, Circus Space, which became the National Centre for Circus Arts in 2014, reflects a new appreciation for an age-old form of entertainment in today’s arts scene.

But as we enter 2018 - Circus250! - the 250th anniversary of Philip Astley’s first circus, a large part of the circus tradition is vanishing - the tradition of animals as a major part of the traditional circus bill.

The circus was born on horseback - Philip Astley was a trick rider who built his show around equestrian skills. Lions, elephants, sea lions and chimps’ tea parties became, by the mid-20th century part of everyone’s idea of what a circus is.

Today, though, the animals are disappearing fast.

As PT Barnum biopic The Greatest Showman hits cinema screens, the show that bore his name, the 146-year-old Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus is no more. Legislation meant it could no longer tour with its elephants and without them it couldn’t sell tickets.

In Britain, meanwhile, just two weeks before the start of Circus250, the Scottish parliament unanimously signed off a ban on wild animals (by which it means all non-native species) in travelling circuses.

Scottish Conservative MSP Donald Cameron said the legislation meant "we will finally and at last truly be able to say Nelly the Elephant has packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus".

It is the first such ban of its kind in the UK, but will it be the last - and will it end with wild animals or prove to be the thin end of a wedge that eventually squeezes even horses - the animal upon which the circus was founded - from a sawdust circle literally designed for four-legged entertainment?

Martin 'Zippo' Burton
(on the right)

Zippos Circus owner Martin Burton, representing the Association of Circus Proprietors, told the Scottish Parliament that a law based on the proposed ethical grounds "will eventually close your zoos".

He said: "The economic impact on animal displays in shopping centres, on displays at outdoors shows of hawks and wild birds, on reindeer and Santa, and eventually zoos will be massive.

"Once you start banning things, particularly on ethical grounds, it is clear that this will spread, because if it's ethically not right to have a wild animal in a circus, then it is ethically not right to have a wild animal appear at a gala or a county show, and it is ethically not right to have a wild animal appear in a shopping centre, and it is ethically not right to have a wild animal appear in a zoo.

"It is clear and logical that that is the only way an ethical ban can go. You can't choose your ethics, you're either going to say it is ethical or it is not ethical."

Burton’s words are being bourn out in Wales, where the Welsh government is currently planning to introduce a new license for Mobile Animal Exhibitions (MAEs). The legislation is aimed at circuses, but because of the difficulty of defining a circus in a way that separates it from other animal exhibitions, the Countryside Alliance and Kennel Club have raised concerns about the effect on other ‘MAEs’ from cattle shows and dog shows to falconry displays.

Across the Irish Sea, the Irish government decreed in November that wild animals would be banned from travelling circuses in Ireland from January 1, 2018.

In England, a ban on wild animals in the big top proposed by David Cameron’s government has so far been staved off with a successful licensing scheme, although the Scottish ban will give fresh ammunition to the animal rights groups pressing for a ban south of the border.

But even without a national ban, local council legislation has reduced the number of ‘wild’ animals in Britain’s big tops to a handful of camels and zebras spread across Peter Jolly’s Circus and Circus Mondao, while only two or three more circuses, such as Zippos, still have even horses or dogs.

The news reminds me of how lucky I was, as a late convert to the appeal of the big top, to visit the Great British Circus during the writing of Circus Mania and be able to report upon the elephants and tigers that I saw there. At the time, it felt like a rare glimpse into a disappearing past. Re-reading that chapter today, with the Great British Circus now five years closed, I wonder if it was the last glimpse of such a circus that any of us will ever see in the UK again.

Is the disappearance of the animals a good thing for the circus? It's an issue I grappled with during the writing of Circus Mania. I was brought up to believe it was a cruel tradition, but as I interviewed animal trainers and show owners and saw more shows, my understanding grew. By the time I wrote a new chapter for the updated 2018 edition of the book and described my visit to Peter Jolly's Circus my opinion on this always contentious subject had changed a lot from the one I had before I saw my first circus with animals. Perhaps yours will, too.

Click here to buy the updated, new edition of Circus Mania and read about my journey through a world that is disappearing fast.

God bless the circus animals - Archbishop welcomes Zippos to Brighton

A Zippos horse with ringmaster Norman Barrett MBE

The horses and budgies of Zippos circus were blessed upon their arrival in Brighton and Hove when Jerome Lloyd, the local Archbishop of Selsey performed the formal ceremony in the big top.

The clergyman told local newspaper, the Argus: “My relationship with Zippo’s began in 2009 when I walked the tight rope without any safety harness for the Sussex Beacon. I became a sort of unofficial chaplain for them. When Reverend Roly Bain died – the renowned priest who also performed as a clown – I took over from him as their official chaplain. Every since then I’ve come back to visit the circus – there’s an affinity with the performers.”

According to Zippos owner Martin Burton: “Circus people generally are very religious. People who risk their lives are very spiritual. You’ll often see the performers crossing themselves backstage before a stunt.

“In the circus community the most wonderful thing is that we have people from all sorts of faiths,” Burton added. “They all work together for the common good. It’s a wonderful thing, I often think the world should live like a circus.”

The blessing seemed to work - opening night was completely sold out.

Zippos is in Hove until September 3.

Zippos circus kicks out clowns shocker!

Years of attacks by animal rights activists couldn't stop Zippos circus touring with cats and budgies, but the evil clown craze has caused showman Martin Burton to call time on that other circus staple, clowns.

According to a report in The Sun, Burton fears the evil clown craze has stoked the fear of clowns to such proportions that he fears families would be put off buying tickets if they thought they'd see any red noses in the ring:

“The recent hijacking of clowns from comedy into horror, started by Stephen King and now adopted at Halloween horror mazes and in film around the world is simply not funny.

"I would like to make it clear to our visitors that Zippos Circus shows feature no clowns, in fact the 'red nose' has been redundant with us for a while - we prefer comic slapstick characters of the Charlie Chaplin style, but nonetheless we are concerned that families might be put off attending our circus, and robustly condemn these clown stalkers."

The press reports about Zippos' no-clown policy, however, are not strictly true. Zippos still features clowning in the form of Mr Lorenz, who may not wear a red nose or a scary mask, but still wears recognisable modern clown make-up including a white lip, and performs clown routines (as opposed to, say, stand up comedy or some form of non-clown funny business).

What we have, then, is a great example of a circus turning the bad clown publicity to it's advantage in the form of national advertising.

It still seems odd though that Burton, who is also the President of Clowns International and a former clown himself, appears to be distancing himself from the clowning profession he's supposed to represent. Is this an example of how badly the prankster clowns have unsettled the professionals?

Zippos Winter Wonderland

Love this aerial shot of Zippos circus 'Mega Dome' big top nestled among the fairground rides and stalls of Winter Wonderland in London's Hyde Park. And my hat's off to whoever took it from the very high vantage point of a thrill ride called Schneider's Power Tower.

Roll up, roll up until January 4.

For the inside story on the birth of Zippos circus, meanwhile, read my chapter-long interview with founder Martin Burton in Circus Mania - The Ultimate Book For Anyone Who Dreamed of Running Away With the Circus. Click here to buy it from Amazon.