PERFORMANCE REVIEW : Circus Sideshow Delivers a Grand Gross-Out Spectacle

The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, which played to a sold-out, surprisingly mainstream-looking audience at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on Thursday, delivered the by-now familiar shocks and thrills of razor-blade eating, bug-chomping, sword-swallowing, face-burning mayhem: Mr. Lifto suspending weighty objects from his pierced body parts, 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 regurgitated vile brew, and Rose himself with his own catalogue of self-mutilating skills.

It’s in keeping with an almost lost American tradition of circus daredevil and freak shows, in which Rose and crew have simply upped the ante in shock and gross-out factors. It’s a grand spectacle, a cathartic mind-blow that had fans screaming, applauding and reciting memorized lines of Roses’ manic spiel like a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” from hell.

Is the Sideshow--which comes to the Variety Arts Theatre on Monday--as vulgar and disturbing as all the hype would indicate? Yes. Should young children be allowed to view this spectacle? 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.