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In Which I Visit The Big Top
August 13, 2007 by Mike
Ger-Ger-Ger-Granville
Today I was mainly very lazy.
I washed some clothes, wrote some bl-- I mean diary, wandered some streets and met a man in a bar who was knowledgeably impressed that I was once related, in a roundabout way (via my ex-wife's ex-stepfather) to Rico, the ex-trombonist in the Specials.
Talking of roundabouts, I rode up to Ger-Ger-Ger-Granville's high town to find the spot where I saw the bike accident yesterday. I needed to give it a go myself and, sure as eggs is eggs, the first time I went round I wobbled and wibbled like a motorcyling jelly. And the second time. This was pyschological. The third and fourth times I started to feel better. (Don't worry, there was no other traffic anywhere near.) I took all the corners fine the fifth time. And, for luck, the sixth time too. Fingers crossed, eh?
Oh, and in the evening, I went to the Circus.
(I mentioned a few days ago how various circuses have been following me round the coast - from Moscow, Vienna and a 'Zavatta Family' big top near Calais. Finally, Mike + Circus met in the same town - or at least a mile down the road in St-Pair-sur-Mer.)
This was the Cirque Stephan Zavatta. Emphasis on the Stephan because the Achille Zavatta Circus was playing in a town four miles down the road. No love lost between them because Stephan's ticket-seller denied all knowledge of the other lot. Achille's poster-putter-uppers claimed Stephan's Circus was all big tent and no content.
And they're family! Imagine what they'd do to people they didn't know and love?
[From what I can tell, these proprietorial Zavattas are all descendants of one Achille Zavatta, a great clown. In Britain, we have a Royal Family whose younger generations are there to make us laugh. France has to make do with, errr, actual clowns.]
So -- how was the circus?
Well, it had all the ingredients a Brit would expect: morose tigers jumping through hoops, an elephant in drag, a dog act featuring one loveable mop of fur that got laughs by doing everything wrong (oh! how we laughed!), a horse act featuring one loveable mop of fur that got laughs by doing everything wrong (oh! but how nobody laughed the second time round) and a pesky llama-and-zebra double act that escaped dramatically under the loose folds of the Big Top before they were obliged to perform. Yes! That last one got a big cheer from me, at least, as handlers scrambled under the canvas in pursuit.
Apart from the possible cruelty aspect, the animal acts were all carried off with a tired air, the humans going through the motions just as much as the benighted creatures. Then there were the human acts -- more enjoyable and undeniably more exciting -- a family of trapeze artists of indeterminate origin sporting obscene mullets, some of whom reappeared in different, spangly lycra as a family of trampolinists. The Master of Ceremonies -- M.Zavatta, I presume? -- was a slightly doughy figure who wore the long red jacket of a head waiter and the steel-framed glasses of a junior accounts clerk.
The climax of the show should have been the clowns. Sad to say (and believe me, I wish I were reporting a wild night of fun) they weren't very funny. They were good trumpeters, but that's not really what you want from yr clowns, is it? The crowd -- average age of 6-and-three-quarters -- was ready to love the clowns Very Much Indeed, but were quickly deflated; the clowns, a father and son by the look of it, didn't have the ooomph to lift us up again and they were off and the lights up before too long.
Of course, now I have to go to another cicrus, preferably another Zavatta circus, to make proper comparisons.
*sigh* - the things I do for you.
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By PASCAL SELFRADI | September 17, 2007 9:25 PM
I am a regular Ringmaster in CIRCUS STEPHANE ZAVATTA but I am not a family member, can you develop your comments about me: "slightly doughy"?
Thank you very much!
PASCAL SELFRADI