CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THE CIRCUS
"Bertram Mills Circus." (Olympia.)
IN the sideshows the prizes are for the most part shoddy; gazing at the pyramids of revolting chinaware, the austerity dolls, the trumpery gadgets, one wonders dully how they fit into the blueprints of the Production Drive. How many forms had to be filled in, how many regulations complied with, before that puce-coloured houri, moulded of some nameless substance in an unbecoming posture, could emerge in her thousands from the factory to grace the hoopla booth? That Britain Can Make It is clear ; her reasons for doing so remain conjectural.
But apart from this minor and unavoidable lacuna, the Circus returns at the top of its form. It has pace, style, humour, and at times a garish and traditional beauty. The most sensational turn is probably the Adelys ; he bicycles upside down a hundred feet or more above us, she dangles elegantly below him, and this act disdains to use a net. Nikolai and his lions do all and more than we expect from them, Madame Louise's dogs are prodigies of discipline and agility, and there are a number of more than usually sagacious horses, of whose various masters and mistresses I, personally, thought the Cumberlands the best. But on the whole it is the odder, the more unnatural-looking, animals who seem most congruous to the ring, and of Bertram Mills' elephants, solemnly completing their ingenious but ungainly evolutions, one never thought—as one did sometimes of their colleagues—" They do it well, but they would much rather do something else." Why, incidentally, does no circus proprietor ever include a show-jumping act? Everybody likes to watch horses jumping, and it would come as a relief, in a way, to see them doing something that is natural to them. I think it is a pity that Charlie Rivels impersonates Charlie Chaplin, for he has an individuality of his own and it is confusing to be always wondering whether one is laughing at him or at the manner- isms he has borrowed. But this is my only criticism of the best act in this year's circus. It defies description, for to say that it consists of a funny man intervening in a straight trapeze act with invariable ill-success conveys nothing of its essence. There were a lot of other good acts, too, more than I have space to mention. As for the clowns, they displayed the same good intentions, the same fleeting pugnacity, the same self-importance, the same inability to see each other's point of view, the same anxiety to help combined with the urge to obstruct, as delegates to the Assembly of the United Nations. They were not the least good part of a circus which is
Previous page
