In the late 1990s, Chicago’s The Midnight Circus used to pop up all over town — in tents, theaters and on scratchy patches of urban grass. The shtick was always pretty much the same: we’re regular local folks who cannot quite believe we’re doing a circus and nor can you. But since no circus ever had a better sense of humor about its own limitations — or performed with such palpable pleasure and narrative invention — these shows were never to be missed.
I haven’t seen The Midnight Circus in quite some time. Rumor has it they’ve been concentrating on the more lucrative private-event market (and they’ve also been working at festivals in Europe). But Julie Greenberg, Jeff Jenkins, their performing street-pooch Lola, and their descriptively named Pretzel Girl, Hoop Girl, Wire Girl, Karate Guy, Trapeze Punk and Strong Man all have shown up in Skokie, doing a self-deprecating, custom-designed show for the Northlight Theatre.
It’s a blast.
If you’re having a week full of small aggravations — or small aggravating people — then “Stilettos, Circus and Soul” might just be the tonic. This circus that knows it’s a silly circus has more belly laughs than there are rules at major corporations. Well, it’s close.
As the title reveals, Midnight Circus likes to a do a lot of cross-genre pollenization. This show is created in conjunction with Mars Williams’ stellar band Liquid Soul, a kind of jazz-funk/hip-hop hybrid with theatrical echoes of Paul Schaffer’s World’s Most Dangerous Band and a taste for improvisation that includes Williams blowing the saxophone from a high wire. If that weren’t incongruity enough, there’s also the presence of cabaret diva Alexandra Billings — knocking out the American songbook betwixt the clowns and, to her great credit, sending herself up to the high heavens. Literally, at one point.
Aside from some knockout just-as-described acts (Pretzel Girl, a.k.a. Alex Friedlander Moore, sure looked like a twisted salty snack to me, and Karate Guy, a.k.a. John Stork, jumps through actual knives and flames), there’s some very humorous faux-Cirque choreography and some top-drawer juggling from Tobin Renwick and David Graham.
But when you boil it down, there really are two great things about this show.
At some performance-oriented troupes, this kind of music-performance collaboration usually comes with that deadly, arty, cross-border earnestness — here it’s all about fun and good times. And this is one of the very few current shows that parents (or grandparents) with teenagers can genuinely enjoy together. I watched a retiree seated near me almost bust a gasket, he was laughing so much. Yet thanks to Liquid Soul, this also is a slick and hip-enough affair to fully impress the young and the callow.
Sure, it’s too long by at least 15 minutes (“Midnight Circus” always had too much material). Its looseness occasionally degenerates into not-quite-sufficiently-rehearsed looseness. And here are so many genres being mixed, the show gets dangerously close to curdle.
But the atmosphere is so warm — and the talents on display are so copious and generous — you’re willing to forgive pretty much anything. With the wacky Mitchell J. Fain as the droll man in charge (not), the self-aware shtick here is that Northlight artistic director B.J. Jones wanted a serious artistic endeavor and got a sleazy cabaret-circus instead. It’s a funny meta-premise and the gag is milked as if it were a cow kidnapped by Skokie and put to work.
Like this great Chicago circus, Northlight Theatre is sending itself up and revealing that rare quality in the non-profit arts world — an institutional sense of humor. Its growing audience is the beneficiary.
“The Midnight Circus: Stilettos, Circus and Soul”
When: Through Sunday
Where: North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.
Tickets: $34-$54 at 847-673-6300
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cjones5@tribune.com
