‘Barnum’ Lacks Sawdust, Has Razzmatazz

One Saturday in 1942, I watched a traveling circus come to Los Angeles, unload its animal cages and unfurl its huge, flapping canvas tent on a vacant lot near 9th and Figueroa streets.

In truth, the golden age of the circus was long gone, but this bedizened vestige of the great old traveling circus that roared into town for a day and then packed up in the dead of night and headed for the next town left a lifelong thrill.

No wonder wanting to run away and join the circus became as American as Huck Finn. This sense of innocence and wonder is at the heart of the family musical “Barnum,” now at the San Gabriel Civic Auditorium--the first major production of the show in Los Angeles County since 1982, when the original Broadway tour hit the Pantages in Hollywood.

The razzmatazz as produced by the San Gabriel Civic Light Opera--including colorful 19th-Century circus posters encircling the theater lobby--features tumblers, acrobats, tightrope specialists, jugglers, clowns, the irrepressible Jenny Lind and Tom Thumb and, of course, the Prince of Humbug himself, Phineas Taylor Barnum, portrayed with infectious panache by Jamie Torcellini.

The production, long on spectacle and short on plot, may lack sawdust and animals--in short, the smell of the real Big Top--but it does enjoy vocal clarity and vivid actors knocking out Cy Coleman’s brassy score under M. Roger Lockie’s live musical direction.

“There Is a Sucker Born Ev’ry Minute,” “Love Makes Such Fools of Us All” and “Come Follow the Band” are among the more memorable numbers, with lyrics by Michael Stewart.

The musical book, by Mark Bramble, covers Barnum’s personal and show-biz ventures from his earliest hocus-pocus in the 1840s, his famous Barnum Museum in downtown Gotham, to his legendary partnership with entrepreneur James A. Bailey in 1880.

But the show’s intimate story of Barnum is more circular than compelling, its main theme being that a sucker is born every minute. But how much more dreary America would be, goes the show’s refrain, without its beloved flimflam artists.

However uneventful they are, Barnum’s private milestones are cleverly framed in the context of circus acts so that we are always drenched in the atmosphere of the center ring. It is that milieu that backdrops Barnum’s courtship and long marriage to the independent-minded Chairy Barnum (the vibrant Susan Hoffman) and his short-lived love affair with his bedazzling Swedish nightingale import, Jenny Lind (the pearly voiced Ann Winkowski, who looks great on a trapeze).

Director Steve Wappel’s staging sticks closely to original director-choreographer Joe Layton’s scheme--including a dangerously long tightrope walk by Torcellini (smoothly essayed). And there is an amusing miniaturized number by tiny Tom Thumb (jauntily performed by Erick Pesqueira against a Gargantuan chair, with choreography by Rikki Lugo).

For their acts, whirling all over the stage at once, circus artists were whipped into shape during three hectic weeks of rehearsal under circus trainer Richie Gaona, a fourth-generation circus performer. At alternate points in the production, performers romp up and down the aisles under looping, overhanging ropes and swings.

The cast, to its credit, appears larger than it is. Twenty performers appear to be twice that number, with some (notably Jerry M. Hawkins and James De Oliveira playing three and four roles apiece. Another (Joy L. Matthews) uncurls a rousing “Thank God I’m Old” with tambourine players.

Ironically, considering its recreation of a circus, old-timers, not children, will better appreciate this show. The Nintendo generation might wonder what the fuss is all about.

But the lingering whiff of the dusty 19th-Century circus (caught in the deliberately soft colors of Tony Walton’s original scenic design) leave you longing for the real thing--not the laser-beamed high-tech circuses of today.

As Chairy Barnum, who would have preferred that P. T. manage a clock factory in Bridgeport, Conn., aptly describes her husband:

“He wanted to give the world a paint job.”