Waldo’s Circus of Magic & Terror: a high-wire return to the darkest of times
“He does not care much for wild animal acts, unless there is a woman in danger.” So runs a line in a 1943 CIA report into Hitler’s psychology and predilections, which contains fascinating details about his love of the circus. Yes, in the Thirties the Fuhrer had a passion for the big-top. The complicating, paradoxical factor, of course, was that this sanctioned form of populist entertainment was peopled with the “non-Aryan” minorities – Jews, Roma and the disabled among them – that Hitler persecuted. To continue as a troupe in such a climate was to put your head in the lion’s jaws.
Steeped in research, but weaving its own fiction, Waldo’s Circus of Magic & Terror, a new show spearheaded by Extraordinary Bodies, pioneers in diverse-led circus, gives us a ringside view of the predicaments of that dark decade and the logistical and ethical contortions they entailed. We see examples of love, camaraderie and heroism, but the beast of fascism lurks in the community too.
At the start, Garry Robson’s ringmaster Waldo dismisses a plea for help from a Jewish counterpart, advising him that the trouble will all blow over. Looking like he has stepped out of a George Grosz painting, with a leering grin, there’s something of a bully about Waldo as he exhorts our applause from his wheelchair, and barracks the company for their amiable introductory round of Pierrot-styled clowning and funny business with a ladder. His son Peter will run away to join the Nazis, and the noose will tighten round the troupe but, in a climactic act redolent of The Sound of Music, a Houdini-like escape occurs under the gaze of the Brownshirts: a very different kind of “ooh-ahh” experience.
Given the cluster of ingredients – spoken and signed dialogue, song and circus feats, including trapeze and other aerial work – the show is a high-wire act itself, balancing sobering information with escapist entertainment. There are wobbles. Hattie Naylor and Jamie Beddard’s script can sound rudimentary. Charles Hazlewood’s ska-influenced songs, though eerily trippy, can incline to the weightless. But the daring fusion of forms and uniting of marginalised and disabled performers from today with the story of their imperilled antecedents invites applause and timely consideration of creeping illiberalism, while Ti Green’s beautiful set and costumes emit their own warmth and shadowy magic.
The spirit of defiance and otherness of the circus is written into the bones of the evening, not least those of dare-devil Jonny Leitch, who wings through the air using upper body strength in ways that make you feel criminally sedentary.
Until April 1 (bristololdvic.org.uk), then touring (extraordinarybodies.org.uk)
