Stage Review
Circus XTREME
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. At TD Garden through Sunday. Tickets: www.ringling.com/tickets
Nicole Sanders studied ballet at Loyola University. But knee injuries curtailed her dancing career, so she sought something else to fulfill her love of movement. Advised that aerial performance would take the strain off her knees, she took up the trapeze.
Now she spends a good deal of her time in the air, with nothing at all to hang onto. As Nitro Nicole, Sanders is one of the featured performers in “Circus XTREME,’’ one of two touring companies in the current incarnation of the venerable Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. She’s a human cannonball, shooting as high as 90 feet in the air before landing on a huge air mattress at the other end of the ring.
“Circus XTREME’’ set up camp at TD Garden Thursday with shows through Sunday. Thematically, this show is cast as the more millennial-oriented of the two (the other touring company’s show is billed as “Out of This World’’). Both, though, present a familiar mishmash of exoticism, clowning, and daredevilry.
Besides Nitro Nicole, Ringling’s “XTREME’’ features a deft BMX stunt-bike crew, a nimble high-wire act, and a lively group of trampoline artists who perform a choreographed routine that would make the Celtics’ Lucky the Leprechaun green(er) with envy.
In the absence of Ringling’s traditional elephant act — the pachyderms all took the buyout plan last spring when the circus retired them once and for all — “Circus XTREME’’ still showcases other members of the animal kingdom. They include 15 beautiful Bengal tigers that have been trained to sit up, roll over each other, and walk on their hind legs; a caravan of Bactriancamels (the two-hump variety) with spangly female riders; and a pack of enthusiastic French poodles that have been trained to form a conga line to the tune of “Uptown Funk.’’
The show moves briskly to the sound of a live house band, which plays ominous heavy metal during the stunts and pop hits punctuated with slide whistles when the show’s dozens of clowns are providing the scripted slapstick.
The whole thing is cobbled together under a loose premise of exotic tourism, with the camels “from Mongolia’s Gobi Desert’’ followed by a group of Asian strongmen who build human pyramids and play catch with kettlebells. Later, there’s a visit to the “Concrete Jungle’’ — the bike tricksters and trampoliners, accompanied by breakdancing circles.
“Turn away from the everyday,’’ as one line from the show’s original theme, sung by ringmaster David Shipman, has it. More than 130 years since the original Ringling Bros. launched its modest circus in Wisconsin, some of the attractions may have been updated for the cellphone generation. But the basic, age-old concept — the impressive feats, the workmanlike bedazzling, and the sheer overwhelming spectacle of the whole thing — remains essentially the same, whatever else the kids may be into.
Circus XTREME
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. At TD Garden through Sunday. Tickets: www.ringling.com/tickets
James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @sullivanjames.
