A snooty review!

This semester I attended a play originally written and produced on Ball State’s campus. While it received good reviews I didn’t agree with a lot of what was being said. So without further ado, my summary and thoughts on the Circus in Winter.

The first play I saw was the Circus In Winter. It is an adaptation from a book about a grieving man who buys a dying circus after the death of his wife. The circus has little to its name. Its cast includes a gypsy trapeze artist by the name of Jenny Dixiana, a few clowns and acrobats, an ancient elephant, and its abusive handler Jack

The main character, Wallace, meets a woman at the circus while he is vacationing in New York City. She is enthralled by his down home Indiana demeanor, and eventually the two marry. They move back to Winston’s hometown of Peru Indiana where he owns a stable.

Their first winter together, Wallace’s wife falls ill and dies. Wallace, along with his cousin Emory keep the stable going while Wallace begins to succumb to his grief. Before it’s too late, it just so happens that a traveling circus is looking for a place to bed down for the winter. Wallace offers to rent out the stable when he realizes that it is the circus he met his wife at. The owner of the circus, eager to get out of his dying business, sells the circus to Winston at a slashed price.

They spend the winter hunkered down in the stable. Wallace eventually develops feelings for Jenny. Jack becomes increasingly fed up with the elephant and beats it mercilessly. Finally the elephant escapes and ends up injuring some townspeople and Wallace is ordered to put it down.

In the end, Jack and Jenny both end up dead. Because despite the fact the Jack beat her too, she loved him too much to live without him and takes her own life. Wallace gets a new elephant and there is a happy reprise of the first song that ends the show.

Now you may be thinking that I wrapped it up pretty fast. I feel that this is appropriate because the show itself had the same rushed feel toward the end. They spent the first act attempting to develop the characters, presumably to set up for a climactic second act. However, after intermission it continued to develop characters, but this time they all took drastic turns in unexpected directions. For instance, Jenny is portrayed as a tough, seasoned circus veteran and is a voice of reason throughout the show. But in the second act she has one song about how her dad beat or molested her, I am unclear on which, and suddenly becomes depressed and subordinate.

It was such drastic and rapid changes like this that left me underwhelmed by the so-called, awe-inspiring performance.