Spectacles: Hellzapoppin, Roman Style

If the early Romans lived for bread and circuses, the contemporary ones make circuses to earn their bread. Now adays, they call them costume pageants, and the tourists gobble them up, even though the shows are more hokey than historical. When the tourist season in Italy quieted down this year, it seemed to Impresario Gino Land! that it would be a shame to waste all those horses, women and gladiators; so he packed them all up and sent them to the U.S. for a multicity tour. Last week Landi’s Festa Italiana opened at Madison Square Garden, and much to everybody’s surprise, the extravaganza turned out to be a kind of 1st century Hellzapoppin.

The spectacle combines the glitter and grace of an ice show, the hell-for-leather horsemanship of a rodeo, the martial pageantry of a Veterans Day parade, and the breath-stopping violence of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. The men are ruggedly masculine, and the girls are worth bringing binoculars for.

The action will appeal to youngsters most of all. The “Carosello of the Roses,” for example, is a dazzling sword fight between six horsemen who try to slash short-stemmed roses from each other’s helmets. The “Coliseum” num ber is even more savage. It opens with a gladiator whipping a half-clad “Roman slave,” winds up with two four-horse chariots racing madly around the ring to see who can get to the victim first. The winner has the honor of tying the slave behind his chariot and dragging him across the arena and through the exit at full gallop. The violence of it all would certainly get a thumbs down from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to People, but on the other hand, Festa Italiana is the only show in town that keeps the performers in stitches.