Review from: Festplatz am Ratsweg, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; 14th June 2025
Circus-Theatre Roncalli has been famed for its poetic nature and its artistry since its debut in 1976. It is one of the circuses I have wanted but failed to see for many years and, as it approaches its 50th anniversary, I have finally made it. I am curious to find out whether the circus that Bernhard Paul started and still directs – with the assistance of one of his children, Vivi Paul-Roncalli – retains the style and quality it is famed for, and whether it remains relevant.
The circus is laid out below me as I descend from the Festplatz station, and it is an impressive sight. The blue and cream striped entry tents and big top are bordered on all sides by a long line of immaculate wagons that are alike in construction and all painted cream with a blue stripe and ‘Circus Roncalli’ written in red. Attention to detail and a commitment to quality run through this circus as consistently as words run through a stick of seaside rock.
The first tent features smartly costumed strolling entertainers, a vintage fairground organ and an early Roncalli tractor, popcorn wagon, and the frog costume of a rubber man from the 1980s. The next tent has a band playing jazz well, attractive refreshment and souvenir wagons, and display cabinets with mementoes of, and tributes to, past circus stars including Caroli and Rastelli.
The interior of the big top is royal blue with red detailing. A red and gold Roncalli floor cloth covers the white ring, and the ring fence is white topped in red. At the back of the ring, above the red-curtained artistes’ entrance, sits the excellent eight-piece Roncalli Royal Orchestra, directed by Georg Pommer. When the audience is settled, adult groups and families practically filling the tent this Saturday evening, the show starts.
A white-faced clown, Gensi, and his red-nosed auguste, Canutito Jr., give an introductory welcome before ascending and descending in a stylised hot-air balloon – a staple talisman of Roncalli shows – then the band strikes up and the audience claps along with the charivari; the performers, showing the occasional trick, running into the ring together.
Now it is time for the first act: Noel Aguilar, a young juggler dressed as a matador in red and gold opens with a flurry of tricks with three silver clubs, building to a quick run of five. He follows with impressively high ping-pong ball spitting to flamenco music before juggling five with hands and mouth. He switches to straw hats, passing them out to audience members to try to throw to his head, then sends four or five hats out like boomerang Frisbees and ends with a run of hat tricks that sees them placed on and taken off the head at bewildering speed, concluding with a classic dive to catch an errant hat. This classic circus routine is performed tidily and at pace, with frequent changes to keep the audience’s attention. Equally time-proven, the live band plays Spanish tunes that invite the audience to clap along.
Keeping the matador theme, Prof. Wacko (Vladimir Georgievsky) enters riding a bull. (Okay, he is really riding a Segway whilst wearing a bull costume that’s like the horses you see in a pantomime). A quick bit of play with the white-faced clown who has carrots and he’s off without overstaying his welcome, for another clown follows directly.
Matute (Omar Alvarez Santana) is an engaging mime-style clown who creates sound effects with his voice. He lucks upon perhaps the best volunteer ever in the audience, a tall young man who seizes the opportunity to replicate Matute’s mimed skipping routine, and then – both now wearing real boxing gloves – takes over a mimed sparring contest ‘landing’ impressive jabs on Matute’s jaw. Matute concedes the lead in this playful scene to the volunteer who, deservedly, gets a huge round of applause at its end, as does Matute for his generosity.
With ARTistART (Art is Art) being the title of this year’s Roncalli show, several routines take famous artists as their theme. The first is Frida Kahlo, represented by Alisa Shehter in a floral headdress and a floor length skirt like Kahlo famously wore to mask a limb difference due to Polio. Having been introduced by five tall and leggy dancers, also with Kahloesque flowers in their hair and around their hips, Shehter takes hold of an aerial hoop and is lifted from the ground, her skirt extending as she rises to still touch the ground. Discarding the skirt, Shehter now performs a skilled routine, replete with splits, spins around the hoop and heel hangs, though I’m uncertain whether it expresses Kahlo’s lifelong pain following a bus accident aged 18, or her eventual release from it, or neither.
The white face clown Gensi – properly Fulgenci Mestres in his 20th season with Roncalli – enters for his first substantial act in his supremely smart blue and white striped clown suit. He desires a classical music concert but is foiled by Canutito Jr. (Alan Dereck), dressed in the classic gold and red military costume adopted by circuses for their ring boys, who blows rude noises with his trumpet, plays freeform jazz on his clarinet, and blasts away on the trombone. It’s tidy and an appropriate length.
Next up, on a melting watch face podium that references Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, a fragment of Pink Floyd’s Time segues to Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time as the second of Bernhard Paul’s daughters, Lili Paul-Roncalli, presents a slick, multi-faceted act that slides from adagio into handstand and contortion before she spins clockface printed cloths on her feet and hands whilst bending over backwards.
As props are set for this and the next act, I cannot help but contrast the smartly costumed ring crew setting and removing props with the stagehands wearing casual clothes in varying shades of black that I saw a few days ago at the Hansa and Wintergarten Theatres. There is no way that Roncalli would settle for that!
The next act perhaps pays homage to popular films – Nights at the Museum and Raiders of the Lost Ark come to mind. Three of Adem Crew, billed as robo-dancers, stand as statues of a Pharoah, a Samurai and Charlie Chaplin in a museum. The fourth sneaks in as a burglar in trade-mark striped shirt and lifts an object from a pillar, setting the trio in motion. The trio come robotically to life, catch the burglar and fold him like a pretzel before setting him in place as a new exhibit. It’s a mildly diverting piece of nonsense.
The crossover between popular culture and high art is fully portrayed in the Parisian final act of the first half. Paintings on easels accompanied by paint-daubed artists and their muses edge the ring; there are beret wearing chaps carrying baguettes, a gendarme, a quintet of cancan dancers, and, inevitably, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, performed with élan by suitably bearded trampolinist Vladimir Georgievsky. He performs a version of Larry Griswold’s classic 1950s drunken man on a diving board routine very well.
Following a 15-minute interval, stylish historic footage was projected on a translucent curtain wrapped around the ring. A Roncalli train was succeeded by elephants and horses, as The Velvet Undergound’s Sunday Morning played, showing fond remembrance of the animals no longer with this circus.
Canutito & Gensi return briefly, playing clarinet and bells harmoniously as Alexandra Saabel and co.’s illusions are set in place. A girl sat on a bench drinks a fluorescent green liquid from a small flask, setting off a magical dream sequence, during which she disappears into the bench, is compressed within a trunk and switched in a substitution illusion. As well-costumed, lit and produced as the rest of the show, this is a fairy tale scene that captivates the children.
Bucking the trend of having the Wheel of Death and/or the Globe of Death at the top of the second act, Roncalli has a perch act, Duo Cardio: Rodrigo Hernández places a substantial six-sided hoop on his forehead, holding it in place with hands, and Solène Albores climbs up to walk around within it and perform several tricks. This is pre-amble to Hernández balancing a pole on his forehead – no hands – which Albores ascends, then Hernández climbs a ladder with her still in place on the pole’s top. She holds a handstand on top of the long pole balanced on the head of Hernández – still on top of the high ladder – then places a hat on one foot, giving a little kick that spins it once to land neatly back on the foot. With her still in place, Hernández then comes down the front of the ladder. And now it’s time for the big trick! Climbing a long pole perched on the shoulder of her partner, Albores attaches her foot to a strap at its top, and Hernández starts to pirouette, turning her; as centrifugal force is applied, she spins horizontally as though on a web rope. This final trick is new to me and looks great; it is a top ending to a skilled routine.
A ballet homage to the pop artist Keith Haring follows, with dancers in black and white stripes introducing grey-haired contortionist Andrey Romanovski who walks around the ring sliding to splits each step – a move I’d happily see more often in circus. He then climbs to the top of a slender, hollow column adorned with Keith Haring style illustrations. After a handstand he slides – bottom first – inside until just his head and feet show. Escaping, he drops his hat into the column and bends forwards to try to reach it, sliding down inside head and feet first, bottom last, before being released through a little door at the bottom of the column. For a finale, Romanovski attaches a rope to his feet and skips frog like on his hands. Both the column and the skipping rope allow Romanovski to demonstrate his flexibility in a pleasingly novel way.
An artist yearning for his muse is the theme of Duo Turkeev’s act. The muse emerges from his painting and the duo perform on a trapeze hung from a single point. Pulling out the trapeze bar away reveals the trapeze ropes to be straps and a romantic lovers duet follows. During it, the muse ascends in splits, a foot in each strap, with the artist, who holds onto her thighs in a front planche, taken up with her. A beautifully lit big spin with glitter ends with the couple embracing on the ground and the audience in raptures.
Matute enters for the last clown sequence with a one-man-band drum and cymbals on his back, which he beats as the band plays and the audience clap along. He splits the audience into thirds to accompany him with claps as he directs, and skilfully arranges for one third to fail to clap on time on each attempt, much to their frustration and the delighted amusement of the other two thirds.
The last act is Zhenyu Li on handstand canes atop a plinth. Bare chested and in flowing white trousers, he performs an impressive array of handstands and strength holds that are enhanced by additional handstand canes being inserted between tricks to top the original ones until he is balancing some six metres from the ground. The assembled canes now have the flexibility to allow him to make an inverted cross in handstand between them. Then, a foot on each cane, he drops down into splits. Finally, in handstand, he swings back and forth on the stacked canes as if it on a sway pole. Skilled, elegant and original.
The artistes, carrying balloons, enter the ring for a colourful finale presentation to a medley of classic circus tracks, including Fucik’s Entry of the Gladiators, When the Saints go Marching in and The Blue Danube by Strauss. The audience is invited into the ring for a dance, before the circus makes its exit, with a wagon symbolising the move to the next town and a couple of dreamers run away with them.
Much of the show is classic to the point of cliché, but it would be churlish to object since nostalgia with a nod to modern sensibilities is what this now all-human circus is all about. The acts are strong throughout the show, which runs a little over two hours; the orchestra is fine, and the circus looks stunning. Together it is superbly crafted popular entertainment and I’m looking forward to seeing the 50th anniversary show.
