THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH
TO MARK 250 YEARS OF THE CIRCUS, WE WONDER AT ITS FEATS, HONK ITS RED NOSE AND CHEER AT ITS COLOURFUL PAST
Diverse, subversive, mischievous… who couldn’t love a circus? Circus appeals to the rebel in us all. Even us Brits. Especially us Brits actually, because circus, with all its mystery, history and derring-do is as British as crumble and custard.
“The French and the Americans, they go on about how they invented cinema, but
we invented the circus,” insists Professor Vanessa Toulmin, of the University of Sheffield, founder of the university’s National Film and Circus Archive. Growing up in a family of travelling showmen and now a world authority on circus, and historical advisor to Circus250, it’s easy to see why Vanessa is still enthralled by the Big Top.
And who knew that every moustachioed strong man, hatted ringmaster and tragic clown had a young Geordie to thank for his (or mostly her – of which, more later) glamorous career?
Step into the ring Philip Astley, who in 1768 bought Ha’Penny Hatch, a scrap of land on London’s South Bank that became the first modern circus. An accomplished horseman, with a military background, Astley was the first to determine that a 42ft ring was the optimum size for using centrifugal force for equestrian tricks. He added acrobatic and comedic entertainments to this winning show and eventually devised the role of ‘ringmaster’ for himself. And the crowd went wild.
Seeing this success, in 1772, Charles Hughes and Charles Dibdin reproduced it with the Royal Circus, Equestrian and Philharmonic Academy. Virtually a carbon copy of Astley’s show, the men became embittered rivals.
REIGN OF THE PARADE
On the other side of the pond, in 1793, John Ricketts opened the first Astley-style entertainment in Philadelphia. In the US the circus grew along with the railway lines, allowing the travelling train shows to become ever bigger. One of the biggest, Barnum* and Bailey’s, who famously owned Jumbo (opposite) – allegedly the world’s largest elephant – was said to have up to 70 carriages at its height. »
But what about the animals?
Animals in circuses have been a contentious topic for some time, quite understandably. Circus animals are protected by the Animal Welfare Act in the UK but, even leaving aside the many allegations of cruelty, the fact is animals’ needs are simply not met in the circus environment. Though bred in captivity, they were often by no means ‘domestic’. On tour, they usually graze in fenced areas but big cats often stay chained up in trucks. They might look like they enjoy performing but that’s probably because it’s the tiny percentage of their day that they aren’t kept in cramped conditions. In February this year, after more than two decades of campaigning by the Animal Defence League and others, the Government promised to ban wild animals in travelling circuses in England by January 2020. And let’s face it, there’s plenty to enjoy in the Big Top without miserable lions, tigers and elephants. These US circuses brought an important addition to the British circus scene – the tent. When Richard Sands’ American Circus came to Liverpool in 1842, it brought with it a canvas tent that was imitated by many. Tents added to the circus’s air of being slightly ‘other’. Vanessa points out that in the 1850s, circus tents were used for meetings by Chartists, the political reformists of the day, providing a space for non-conformists, which has always been and remains one of its most important facets. It brings the ‘other’ to the masses.
Eventually these tents became fancy flatpack affairs made of wood with a canvas top – sturdier but still easily packed up to parade into each town.
And what a parade it was. Troops of acrobats, elephants, bands, steam vehicles and curiosities, miles long, would herald the arrival of the circus, an event almost as a big as the opening night – sometimes bigger. One circus parade in King’s Lynn badly damaged a pub with a circus wagon pulled by 40 horses. But the publicity the story brought the pub led to the landlord enthusiastically changing the inn’s name from The Mayflower to The Forty Horse Inn.
BIG TOP BOOM
Buoyed by the young Queen’s love of the form, Victorian circuses became ever bigger and better. The stars of the early modern circuses were the tightrope artists and acrobats. Vanessa is still as enthralled as the Victorians: “I love physical acts – there’s just nothing like watching a triple somersault. I saw one three years ago in Blackpool and thought ‘it must be 25 years since someone did a triple at the Tower.’ Wonderful!”
Wonder-ful sums it up, doesn’t it? The point of circus is to leave you wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Some of the ‘curiosity’ acts feel uncomfortable to our 21st-century consciences, but there was a positive in the way circus embraced the unusual. “People in circuses were treated as performers, not specimens,” says Vanessa and points out that in issues as important as racial diversity, the circus was way ahead: “It’s interesting, that in the mid 1800s, Pablo Fanque, who owned the largest circus in the north of England, was a black man and yet in all the reviews of the time, no one mentions that about him. It simply wasn’t important.”
Women, too, get a fair crack at success in the circus: they make up the vast majority of
circus performers and have always been central to the show from the beginning to the present day. Astley’s wife Patty performed alongside him; the first human cannon ball was a 14-year-old girl named Zazel; Yasmin Smart (Billy’s granddaughter) was the first female ringmaster. And today Nell Gifford runs one of Britain’s biggest circuses. Weirdly, there are very few female clowns.
The 20th-century circus was dominated by three circus men: Bertram Mills, who, underwhelmed by the Great Victory Circus, took on a wager of £100 to run a better one. It was the toast of London for almost 40 years. A few years on, in 1946, Billy Smart bought a second-hand tent and launched his New World Circus, with Wild West acts as its centrepiece and filmed by the BBC from 1947 to the late 70s. Stepping into his shoes was Gerry Cottle, known for his animals. But, during the 1980s, a public swell of feeling against animal acts was one of the catalysts for a different type of circus.
DAWN OF THE NEW CIRCUS
The New Circus movement had begun in the mid 70s, with companies in Australia, France and the West Coast of the US doing circus in a ‘cooler’, more ‘performative’ way with story arcs and stylised looks. In Britain, with street theatre gaining in popularity, a similar movement was underway. In the 1980s, companies such as the off-beat Ra-Ra Zoo and Cirque du Soleil took off. Cirque du Soleil, founded by two street performers, had no animals and, wholly character-driven, a strong theatrical element.
Vanessa feels contemporary circus is a mixed bag: “Some really understand the history. Some see it as performance culture… But it’s all been done before. It all still comes down to the skill and the artistry.” That’s not to say she is in any way sniffy about the new acts. “Plaster Angels by Crying Out Loud... Well – it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in my whole life.”
Her wish for Circus250? “I hope it makes people see that circus is the equal of other performance types. Because it is all about the skill, anyone can be a circus performer,” insists Vanessa, tantalisingly. I’d quite like to run away with her. Juggling balls, anyone?
“Wonder-ful sums it up. The point of circus is to leave you wide-eyed and open-mouthed”