Russian Circus

Superb Fools and Hopeless Romantics

It may not be the greatest show on earth, but this circus is the best Hungary has to offer.
Complete with clowns that will make you laugh, acrobats that will make you shriek, animal acts that will make you smile.
This new and improved show is at the Fovarosi Nagy Circusz until the end of August.
According to the director of the show, Gyorgy Heitz, the production is a toast to the beauty of the circus:
"Nowadays, children know a Ford from an Opel or a Honda, but they get scared by a flying bird! They shouldn't meet a chicken just at supper, when it's roasted. I believe in beautiful animal training acts, without brutality, which show that humankind is not losing contact with the animals. The trainer doesn't call his lion 'my animal' but 'my colleague'."
Circus director Istvan Kristof, backs him up: "Even more, if it happens that one evening the trainer runs out of money,

most likely he won't have supper, but he doesn't let the animal go to sleep hungry." The show starts. With each act you become more entranced. Horses waltz. Ponies sleep submissively, lulled by nostalgic trumpet tunes.
Miniature dogs pull, with brisk tiny steps, a small cart in which a dog band wearing Russian peasant shirts plays on a balalaika and an accordion while the others dance wearing colorful ballet skirts.
Clowning tumblers dressed as convicts mock their supervisor who wants to discipline them with his oversized cudgel. Then they form a centipede and wriggle out of the ring.
Later a "janitor" gets caught in the ring inside the safety net and a pack of lions bursts in. Scared to death, he uses a broom as a weapon against them. He becomes relaxed and begins cracking jokes: "Oh, look, here is my mother-in-law! Do come in!" or: "It's not as dangerous as my wife is!" In a Samson-like parody, he walks out carrying a lion on his shoulders and at that moment we realize the janitor is actually a lion trainer.

Olga Korbut-like female acrobats, gracefully handle phosphorescent hula-hoops or make a rainbowish slinky dress out of them, in perfect coordination to a Latin American rhythm.
Others risk their lives somersaulting six meters high to Russian folk songs. Or hang from invisible plastic safety lines, with no nets underneath, and swing like diaphanous silver dragon flies on the trapeze.
A drunken sailor who looks like Groucho Marx interrupts these professional champions, and brings screams of fear from the audience as he yoyos between the highwire and the ring at lightning speed. Clowns pop up throughout the show, spicing it with their gags and antics.

The Russian duo Jurij and Leon, seem stepped right out of Russian fairy tales. "My work is smiling," says Jurij, "I am a clown because life has to have a smile. When I see the audience smiling, it is a holiday for me."
He portrays the naive and charming fool, the silly kind-hearted Ivanushka Durachka, the youngest child. Leon, plays the elder brother dressed up in princely velvets, the snobby fool, the lazy, aggressive, hateful one, in contrast to his brother, making us love Ivanuska more.
They make bitter-sweet jokes about East European scarcity, about the happiness of buying TV sets, fridges, when they were rare on the market, and so expensive that you could call yourself a success if you got them in less then a lifetime. Even toilet seats was a black-market item. To demonstrate the point, they use now easy-to-get toilet seats as hoops in the act, tossing them around Leon's neck.

The main attraction of the show is the elephant trainer, Wendel Huber from Switzerland, winner of the Silver Clown Prize at the Monte Carlo Festival. He uses no whip or hook in his act. "I play the fool. I don't even talk," he says. "They're working behind my back. It's more a game then training. They're quite friendly together. In the act they never do what I want." To the animal rights activists full satisfaction, elephants and St. Bernards kick the trainer, disobeying his commands. The dogs even bark at him to make him obey their commands. The trainer is trained by the trainees.
In the end the elephants walk trunk-in-tail with the dogs and wave colorful handkerchiefs in farewell, Ivan gives that night's Show Lady of His Heart a bunch of plastic flowers. His smiling big eyes glow in bliss. The audience shouts and whistles. They gave us smiles; we give them applause.
Indeed, circus productions combine vulgar bragging with high art.

The Lady of His Heart

They are an expression of popular spirituality. The same beauty and emotion appeal to us today as it did to our grandparents. Acts are still wonderfully risky and humor is still brassy.
After the closing parade we leave the circus thinking of the clown's words: "We circus people are normal people. Normal... I mean... normal! Do you understand?!"
Maybe he meant superb fools and hopeless romantics.

The Budapest Sun,
May 5-11, 1994

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