Review from: Imperial Theatre, New York; 8th October 2024
Based on Sara Gruen’s novel of the same name, the musical Water for Elephants opened on Broadway on March 21st, 2024 after previews began on February 24th. By the time I watched it on October 8th, it had already announced it would be closing on December 8th, having played 301 regular performances and 25 previews since February. Whilst heartfelt and full of energy and joie de vivre, having watched the production I’m not surprised that it hasn’t survived the highly competitive New York theatre scene long, despite its successful run in Atlanta last year. The creators of the show have tried to break with convention by giving audiences a groundbreaking blend of musical theatre, folk music, traditional circus and contemporary circus… The attempt is valiant, but most of the time it simply does not work for me. If you’re yet to see the show yourself, a US tour has been announced for Autumn 2025.
The various visual elements of stage design (sets by Takeshi Kata, costumes by David Israel Reynoso, lighting by Bradley King, projections by David Bengali) aim for a vintage, nostalgic vibe; a sense of circus americana, fitting with the ‘flashback’ mode of storytelling. The puppets, for example, are mostly in muted tones, creating a sepia-like effect similar to old photographs; the costumes, too, try to walk a tightrope (pun intended) between glitz and glamour and the more vintage feel – but as a circus historian I cringe at the liberal use of the colour green, a colour no traditional circus artist would be caught dead in (traditional circus artists can be quite superstitious, and green is known as a bad luck colour in those circles).
The music – a very folksy and country-inspired score from the team of PigPen Theatre Co – includes many upbeat, rambunctious group numbers and a few more intimate duets and trios; but I go home with none of the tunes looping in my mind.
The story of Water for Elephant is built upon a strong trio of characters traveling the US with a 1930s circus: Jacob the veterinary student turned circus vet; Marlena, the circus star and Jacob’s love interest; and her charming yet abusive husband August. However, for me, the production’s puppets (by Ray Wetmore & JR Goodman of More Good Productions Inc, and Camille Labarre), are the highlight. They display some of the most creative and out-of-the-box thinking, bringing to life circus animals without actually having live creatures – a challenge many circuses face nowadays. Rosie, the circus’s star elephant, is especially delightful: she’s embodied in various ways, from a shadow upon a scrim to a two-high acrobatic duo to a fully fledged puppet operated by multiple puppeteers.
The circus design, from Shana Carroll, attempts some interesting approaches to bridge together elements of traditional presentation – to tie in with the 1930s setting – and contemporary styles more befitting the artists’ training and the sensitivities of circus on a theatre stage.
Sometimes it works beautifully: In Act One, as her liberty horse Silver Star is in pain, heroine Marlena (played by Isabelle McCalla) calms it with the song ‘Easy‘. As she sings to the horse – personified by a puppet – the actor/acrobat playing Silver Star (Nicholas Zelle, in his Broadway debut) takes to the air with a silvery-white hammock. As Marlena soothes and pets the ailing horse-puppet, Nicholas embodies it in the air – twisting, rolling and flying over the audience with a simple yet elegant choreography.
There are other moments that spark joy: Walter (Philippe Aymard), the resident clown of the story, is funny in both the onstage and backstage skits, with a charm and excellent sense of physical comedy; shadow play is frequently used as a creative solution in a clever way; and an orangutan played by acrobat Alexandra Gaelle Royer climbs and writhes atop a scaffold with a physicality that is delightfully playful and entirely believable.
But there is not much circus technique in the show overall, and mostly it’s on quite a basic and uninspired level. There is an attempt to override this by staging a big dream sequence towards the end of the show, but the number makes little sense and seems to serve no purpose other than to shove as much circus in at the last minute as possible (from small touches of circus beforehand, in this scene we see multiple lyras, a Cyr wheel, straps, a tightwire and trapeze all onstage at the same time).
It is a shame, as the show has genuine potential for blending musical and circus in inspiring ways, like Pippin did on Broadway approximately ten years earlier.
I actually found myself thinking about Pippin a lot throughout the night. I watched the revival’s original cast in 2013 and thought that the musical elements and circus elements blended quite well, and I was wondering how and why it was that Water for Elephants had failed to achieve a similarly successful blend.
The more obvious possible answer is that it tries to do too much: an unusual score full of indie/folk/country music, circus that’s both traditional and contemporary, puppets of many kinds, a story within a story… When shooting in so many directions, perhaps it’s no wonder that it all falls short. Perhaps it would have been better to aim for doing one or two things expertly, rather than try to do too much and offer so many different flavours.
The less obvious answer, one which has been circling my mind ever since, lays with how and why circus was used in both productions: In Pippin there was no representation of a ‘real’ circus setting, but rather the circus elements were used metaphorically to accentuate the plot and the leading character’s inner turmoils. In Water for Elephants, the circus factor didn’t work when it was moments of acrobat characters performing their circus skills in the fictional world onstage – and it certainly didn’t work when it was a random cacophony of circus apparati appearing in Jacob’s dream for no foreseeable reason. The only moment I felt that the circus truly ‘worked’ was when it was a metaphor for the inner life of the horse Silver Star.
Perhaps, then, circus elements in a musical theatre production work best when the circus is not serving up expressions of a genuine circus in the plot, but rather act as a metaphor; as a tool for storytelling, just another thread in the tapestry of weaving together a good musical theatre production.
