O.C. CIRCUS REVIEW : Cheap Thrills, Quality Shock

The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow played to a sold-out, surprisingly mainstream-looking audience at the Coach House Thursday night, delivering shocks and thrills, razor-blade eating, bug-chomping, sword-swallowing, face-burning mayhem:

Mr. Lifto suspending weighty objects from his pierced body parts (yes, including that )! The Enigma eating live bugs and sharp objects! Matt (The Tube) Crowley inhaling a pitcher of beer (mixed with ketchup, chocolate syrup and liquid antacid!) through a tube in his nose and inviting eager audience members to drink the vile regurgitated brew! Rose himself with his own catalogue of self-mutilating skills!

All of it was in keeping with an almost lost American tradition of circus daredevil and freak shows (though unlike the shows of old, the physically deformed aren’t part of these proceedings). Basically, Rose and crew have simply upped the ante in terms of the gross-out factor. The performers concentrate on shock value, daredevilry and mind-boggling feats of physical endurance in their attempts to thrill, amaze and disgust an audience. They’re quite successful on all three counts.

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It’s a grand spectacle, a cathartic mind-blow that had fans screaming, applauding and (familiar with all this from MTV) reciting memorized lines of Roses’ manic spiel--a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” from hell. With his unkempt head of hair setting off a pointed goatee and piercing, intense eyes, Rose could act as a double for Satan.

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Is this show (which will be at the Variety Arts Theatre in Los Angeles on Monday) as vulgar and disturbing as all the hype would indicate? Yes. Should young children be allowed to view this? No. Are Rose and crew sick, morally retarded exploiters of human nature at its worst? That’s a value judgment one has to make for oneself. But undeniably, the event is a breathtaking roller coaster ride of cheap thrills that spectators won’t soon forget.