My husband Dirk was from Baraboo, WI, the longtime winter home of the Ringling Brothers Circus and the home of Circus World. His own contribution to the arts, though, was more sedate: he was a fabulous photographer. There is nothing sedate about the circus, and there is nothing sedate about the musical Water For Elephants, adapted by Rick Elice with songs by Pigpen Theatre Company from the 2006 novel by Sara Gruen. From just a few moments in—just long enough to establish that we are seeing the memories of an old, retired circus man—we are immersed into the lively, frenetic, fascinating world of the traveling circus in 1931, and we are just along for the ride.
The man in the prologue (Robert Tully) was Jake Jankowski, who (in a clever bit of staging) becomes his own 23-year-old self, Jacob, played by the silver-voiced Zachary Keller. Jacob is emotionally lost; his parents have died in a car crash and their house foreclosed upon, so the all-but-the-finals veterinarian who was going to join his dad’s practice after graduation is suddenly a penniless, homeless orphan. In despair, he drops out of school and, with nothing else to do, hops onto a passing train to anywhere at all. (Cue Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” Or don’t.)
The train turns out to belong to the Benzini Brothers Circus, a small operation run on a shoestring by August (Connor Sullivan). At first the circus people are suspicious of the intruder, but August finds out that he is a veterinarian (well, almost, but that’s enough for the circus) and asks him to check out Silver Star, a horse beloved by August’s wife Marlena (Helen Krushinski). The horse, like almost all of the many animals here, is portrayed through some clever and impressive puppeteering. It’s got a broken leg, though, so Jacob knows that it has to be put down.
It is in this scene where we truly discover how visually spectacular this musical is: the actor playing the horse (Yves Artiere) suddenly sheds his costume and climbs up a silk ribbon toward heaven as the horse’s spirit weakens, and finally (after Jacob fires the gun that kills him) unwinds until he becomes a lifeless body on the ground. Bradley King’s lighting and Walter Trarbach’s sound design, along with original musical compositions, make the scene absolutely stunning.
Under the direction of Jessica Stone and circus designer Shana Carroll (Jesse Robb worked with Carroll on the choreography) this is a show that does not skimp on the value for your entertainment dollar. My adult daughter, taking a night off from her husband and children, and I—along with everyone near enough to us to hear—were thoroughly entertained and completely engrossed. And that was in no small part due to the unusual nature of a show that is part musical and part circus. My daughter described it afterwards as living in the world of Cirque du Soleil “but with a real plot.”
But while Cirque is other-worldly with its acts and costumes and music, Water For Elephants, despite a proliferation of aerial acts (on hoops, on trapeze, on silk ribbons, or simply jetted into the air by human power), is far more grounded. The main characters are likable (or, in the case of August, who reveals himself to be the villain of the piece, unlikable) and Keller and Krushinski have great chemistry together (though, as is often the case, I could not really understand how she ended up with the abusive ringmaster in the first place), and several supporting players (Javier Garcia, Tyler West, and Ruby Gibbs especially) are extremely sympathetic.
And then there are the puppeteers. Oh my goodness. All of the people portraying the circus’s menagerie (including Gabriella Diaz, who without puppetry plays an orangutan) are amazing, but the five people it takes to perform the role of Rosie the elephant (Ella Huestis, Grant Honeycutt, Bradley Parrish, John Neurohr, and Carl Robinette) especially deserve recognition. Rosie becomes a character we can almost believe is actually alive, and is instantly a favorite as soon as she appears. It’s some of the best animal puppetry work I’ve ever seen. Period.
The show is strikingly entertaining, but it is not perfect. Most of the songs aren’t that memorable, a significant drawback in a musical. I was confused by some confusing double-casting, especially in the framing story. The climactic scene, a stampede by the animals, is nicely structured but over so quickly that it’s hard to register what is going on. But these are not things that are likely to impede your entertainment. Water For Elephants is as much a love story to the circus as anything you’ll find in Baraboo. Maybe it’s not the greatest show on earth, but it strives hard to simulate one, and as August explains in a song called “The Lion Has Got No Teeth,” circuses (and musicals too) are about selling illusions, not reality. And it isn’t hard here, especially with the glorious acrobatics and the amazing puppetry, to embrace the illusion.
Water For Elephants is now playing at the Nederlander Theatre in the Loop, now through July 5. Performance times vary; check the website at Broadway in Chicago. Find more information about current plays on our Current Shows page and at theatreinchicago.com.