4 AD EXPECTED a circus like any other. 'Moscow State Circus'
;41(3unded rather grander, to be sure, but what's in a name? It as in no fever of anticipation that I settled my party in their t'heats and sought ice-cream for the younger members. But, by e °_,tirtle I got back, the Grand Parade was in progress, and this anucaringly formal salutation of the audience by the artists did 0 great deal to break down sales-resistance. Whoosh ! Before oille could light a cigarette there was a space-ship circling under 6° roof with a pair of death-deders spinning by their teeth neuth it. 'Omsk, Tomsk, Vladivostock,' said the ringmaster, anu,0 looked like a younger, and most elegant. Fred Astaire, a charming young person was tying herself in knots on a c-,,uttliara carpet. `Dniepropetrovsk !' said the ringmaster, and in h,le Oleg Popov, a Chaplinesque Teddy boy. He dropped his t .1"; and in trying to pick it up he dropped his stick, and in srY1ng to pick it up he dropped his hat, and—. Within thirty flds0 doubt remained: this was the funniest clown to uPPear in the Western world since Charlie himself tried to scratch his itching back on a nutmeg-grater. Monsieur Popov wears his hair in a longish bob, conceals his legs in baggy breeches, dispenses with the mask to which we are accustomed, performs on the slack wire with the utmost insouciance, and twiddles the audience round his walking-stick. He is, in short, a genius. But the whole ensemble is the most skilful and graceful that I have ever seen. By the time the perfectly tailored ring- master had grated the word 'Interval' into the microphone, one was ready for an ice-cream oneself. What wonders remained undiscovered? After the interval the human part of the circus was superbly parodied, -detail by detail, by a company of bears which did everything that the tumblers, clowns, acrobats, equilibrists and equestrians had done—and rode motor-bikes into the bargain. An astonishing thing. As one of them. dressed in a frilly skirt, walked round the ring on its forepaws, I fully expected the young woman from Fleet Street two seats away to exclaim (like the girl in that novel of Huxley's): 'But they're just like us, my dear !' Perhaps she did, but already all my attention was fixed on a bear-clown which looked as if it were about to say, `Mr. Speaker . .
Previous page
