This Is Old, Pussycat--But It's Fun

Skirts rise, movie screens widen, and astronauts walk in space, but in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden it is 1898--and will be until the circus leaves town. Last week the Greatest Show on Earth came north with the birds, bringing its customary amalgam of animal and human acts from Europe and America. Some concessions are made to the 20th century: there is an elephant production number entitled "This Is New --Pussycat," and 50 sumptuously undercostumed ballerinas go through the Radio City Music Hall bit (step, two, three, whirl, kick) to the tune of What's New, Pussycat? But otherwise the circus seems happily unaltered from the days when Barnum was fleecing one a minute.

The Show program is still alliterative: "Extraordinary Equine Exhibition! Res-inback Riders and Revelers! Trilogy of Teeterboard Terrors!" And the circus' biggest acts are still those with negative benefits: a Siberian tiger named King rides around on a horse named Tiger and does NOT eat him; a Mexican acrobat does a triple somersault--the one that gave Burt Lancaster all that trouble in Trapeze--and does NOT fall: Helena Rassy's pastel-dyed pigeons are released from the balcony and flutter down to her and NOT into the crowd.

The circus has 17 new acts, but the biggest one is not in the center ring but in the audience. To the throngs of children, the 96-year-old show is all fresh and new. Their thrills of terror at the acrobats are genuine, their laughter at the clowns unforced and free. And as the lights go out and they swing their souvenir flashlights on strings ("Only a dolleranaquardagitemnow!"), they make a thousand circles of light in the arena --a Spine-Tingling Superlative Spectacle that Old Man Ringling would have paid a fortune for and kids can see for No Additional Price.

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