No child in its right mind would run away to join the circus
described in Sarah Hammond’s Circus Tracks—a circus
that “got its heart broke twice,” according to Leelio (Megan Ahiers), a sideshow freak whose body is covered with handprints
allegedly left by God. Hammond’s script is filled with the kind of
fabulism that ambitious theater groups love to tackle. Dried-up lake
beds are surrounded by tall walls of water, fish eat depressed clowns’
hearts while swimming in the sand, and a heartbroken, semicompetent
trapeze artist tells the same story over and over again (Colin Connors,
twisted with grief).
The water takes the form of two large sheets of gauzy red netting.
The play’s many musical instruments and costumes are picked from mounds
of thrift-store finds at the edge of the stage. A transgender cavewoman
dances, and instruments as varied as xylophone, banjo, and accordion
contribute to a soundtrack that feels almost improvised by the entire
cast.
There’s a story somewhere in these piles of secondhand treasure.
Christine Longe plays Dewey, a girl abandoned by her clown-mother 13
years ago, who is trying to find her way back to the circus. Jason
Harber has a difficult job as Maximillion—a clichéd evil
circus overlord who steals his freaks’ talents and keeps them in a
magical box—and he comports himself with lazy style. It’s
certainly not the actors’ faults that the play abandons them in the
middle of a watery apocalypse that seems less a fairy-tale ending than
an out-of-place Bible lesson. Despite the script’s vagaries, the
hardworking actors collect the various threads of theme and character
into something very close to a satisfying—if
tragic—ending. 