The Theater: Signs of Spring

Manhattan’s substitute for crocuses—the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey circus—began its longest visit in history (47 days) at Madison Square Garden last week. It should also prove one of its most enjoyable visits. Done up in style, this year’s circus has wonderfully gaudy costumes, good-looking girls, emerald-green tanbark, a special and sumptuous Alice in Wonderland pageant. To Deems Taylor music (some of it from his well-known Through the Looking Glass suite) the Jabberwock, the Oysters, the Walrus, a bright-colored set of Chessmen, a decidedly Mad Hatter, a head-slicing Queen of Hearts swagger, slither and galumph.

Many of the other 19 displays are familiar, most of them are good. The astounding Lalage hangs by one arm right under the roof while she flapjacks herself a hundred times or more; the Wallendas dazzle on the high wire. There are clowns in all sizes and shapes, and plenty of animals. Trained seals, tooting My Country, ‘Tis Of Thee, manage to be irresistibly funny. For the first time the big wild animal act displays six statuesque chorines inside the cage, one of whom wraps a leopard around her bare shoulders. And down in the basement Mr. & Mrs. Gargantua carry on one of the greatest hate affairs on record.

Flameproofed Big Top. Whether this year’s circus would ever get under canvas after its indoor runs in Manhattan and Boston was, up to this week, still in doubt. With six key circus men convicted of involuntary manslaughter following the Hartford fire that cost 168 lives last July, the circus faced complicated technical problems which it saw no way of solving while these men (whom it considers irreplaceable) are in prison. Last week, after a Hartford judge suspended one man’s sentence and gave two of the officials sixty days’ freedom before starting to serve their lightened sentences, there was a fair chance they could get things well enough under way for the circus to go on tour.

When it does play under the Big Top again, the circus will be as safe as it can be made—not fireproof, but “flameproofed.” Roughly, this means that the 75,000 yards of canvas, the 41 tents and the wooden parts of the folding grandstands can still catch fire, but that flames cannot spread beyond the area of the fire. After a lot of thought, the circus decided not to yank its Clown Fire House act, feeling “it would be more conspicuous by its absence.”