ARTS REVIEW: RINGLING BROS. AND BARNUM & BAILEY - 'FULLY CHARGED'

A Classic Circus to Bring Out the Kid in Adults & Cause the Kids to Laugh Contagiously

By: Josh Moorhead

July 21, 2011

(July 20, 2011 in Los Angeles, California) It's a circus out there. Or, more accurately, there is a circus out there. At the Staples Center downtown, there is a giant tent that will relieve you from the cruel torture (but tan-giving!) of the sun. Under this tent, there are people on fire, tigers and elephants doing the cha-cha, people riding bicycles on tightropes, and other things that challenge the limits of the absurd and believable. When Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey profess to have The Greatest Show on Earth, I half expected a TV to be carted out to the center ring with old seasons of Lost rigged up to it.

What I got instead was maybe not the GREATEST show on Earth, but one that raised great existential questions, for me, about humanity. Ants have farms, and apparently people have flea circuses, but I've never seen anything else that does what we do unto each other for the heck of it and because we can. In this way, the circus makes less sense than war. In war, people fight for something, even if that something can be misguided -- but why does that dude in the left ring swallow a sword? Why does that girl sit on top of a chair on top of a guy on top of a bike on top of a string on top of nothing except maybe five or six stories of death chomping at the bit? Well, I'm guessing: 1) because it probably impressed the girl next to me, which articles about people that do these things fail to do; 2) it sells merch. I didn't get Lost, after all, but I did get a 12-dollar glass that looks like a white tiger and operates like a stein that a future, drunker Josh will be doing Sheen impressions next to, insisting he's drinking tiger blood (again, not impressive to the lady next to me); 3) if you can see elephants dance, or seven men stack upside-down standing on each others' feet on a rope, why wouldn't you? But most importantly 4) it's those laughing kids, man.

In this way, to counter my earlier point, the circus makes a lot more sense than war, regardless of what the PETA protesters outside The Staples Center have to say about it. (Really, is an elephant or a tiger not going to crush that bald guy on the floor if they were living in poor conditions?) The things that we use to deviate -- a book, a film, a cartoon, an afternoon of laser tag -- all have their place in something Jesus (color him a carnie or not) must have picked up on when he talked about the "faith of a child."

It's really easy, at 26 in LA, to be all post-modern hip and ironic about clowns. As classically depicted, they're terrifying after all. It's really easy to say something like the circus is "gay," though my heavy quotes there should indicate the stupidity of said statement. Guess what! Those clowns Ringling et al got goin' were funny as junk. I was delighted. And you know who laughed the hardest in that arena when they caught themselves on fire and fell off ladders, etc.? The kids, man. They lost it. And there wasn't an ironic note in any of it. Then you know who smiled right wide when the kids burst out, despite being decked out in consumerism as they were with their glowy knick-knacks and s'mores on sticks? The adults. Their attention shifted from the hijinks and spectacle of the floor -- the Greatest Show on Earth -- to a smiling under-10 who couldn't have been more jubilant about the whole enterprise. That -- I suspect, if any of these clowns take their art or work with a degree of sincerity -- is why they would. Because it's not just for the kids. When the kids give in, the adults do too, looking to their sides instead of the floor. The second that guy flies out of a cannon on freaking fire? Like, real fire? You kind of forget your ambitions, worries, longings...maybe even the girl next to you. And a few hundred people share one big sense of awe and "Whoa."

After the popcorn is bought on a credit card, parking is covered with the cash from the ATM that you paid an extra $2.50 to pull from, after the house lights go down and the work e-mails on the BlackBerry go the way of the dodo, the circus not simply distracts you -- it departs you to their whole world of furry, flaming, bouncing crazy. And you're left wondering, as I did, in a sensory stupor like a Michael Bay movie minus the CGI and somehow plus more plot and emotion, if your mind's this blown or you're just THAT hungry for a burrito. Well, one guy in a cannon later, one stack of waving tigers after, burritos didn't matter as much anymore. Mind-blow complete. You wonder, "Why would any human being do this, and why would anyone go and see?" Well, ask Sir Edmund Hillary. Because we can. Because it's there. Because it rules. That last part was me and seemingly everyone else at the circus.

Bonus note: Anyone attending is welcome to walk to the floor for an hour previous to showtime and chat it up with the circus folk and enter to win prizes, like art painted by the elephants. No joke. Other perks are trying on costumes, walking a tightrope and, for the kiddos, dancing with the ladies of the circus. Sorry, older gents. Appears as if they're taken.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Present 'Fully Charged' at The Staples Center through the weekend.