Page 25 - The Outdoor Showman OCT-DEC 2021

CIRCUS NEWS
Circus Year 2021 will go down as spotty: some good, some excellent, and some terrible.
Insurance is still a huge hurdle (as with most Showmen), since British insurers refused to handle most entertainments at all.
The Pepe Ashton Family production ‘Infamous’ probably did best of all Australian shows.
Its 18-years-and-over cabaret circus did mostly excellent business, all along the Northern run, extending seasons often, up until close, Sunday, December 5th at Hervey Bay.
Lennon Bros’ Circus showed right up to Cairns, showing major cities to good- to-excellent houses until the bottom fell out of it back around Brisbane.
Arguably now Australia’s largest,
Circus Stardust, sat closed on Rosehill Racecourse for three months, watching thousands of cars a day pass their spectacular bridge until October.
Then six weeks’ showing took in Manly, Warriewood (they ended up cancelling the Bonnyrigg) and one more site, before they retired to their property on the Hawkesbury.
Damien Syred’s Circus Royale fared no better. He paid expensive overseas acts for almost two years without earning a cent, locked down in lockdown-prone Victoria.
When he was ready to open, many performers left for overseas contracts, and Government restrictions meant he could seat only a small proportion of his regular audience.
Nobody could move properly with the restrictions.
But true to character, the show must, and did, go on.
Good/bye 2021. It couldn’t get much worse!
French ban
France’s national parliament banned the use of exotic animals in circuses, in an act passed in the third week of November.
It also banned pet shops from selling puppies, kittens, or other pets. Figures showed that France abandoned 100,000 dogs and cats each year.
The Animal Party is running a candidate in the five-yearly Presidential election next year.
Stardust Animals Retired
Australia’s last circus using lions
and monkeys has been forced to
retire the wild animals after being unable to get insurance. Stardust Circus has been using lions in its travelling family circus for half a century but had to retire its six lions and four monkeys earlier this year after being unable to renew its insurance.
By John MacDonnell
The last Australian Circus Lions from Stardust Circus
It was a very sad day for the Lennon family, particularly for trainer Mathew Smith, when the six lions were retired to their new home at the new Central Coast Zoo at Wyong Creek. An excellent enclosure and facilities have been built to house the pride.These photos certainly show how well cared for the lions have been at Stardust Circus.
Sites and Covid19 were the problem.
After they left all animals behind and re-named the show Lennons21, getting permission to open at all was a major success - and it was already months into the run.
Lennon’s had a tight, well- choreographed, musically-excellent program, that featured four big acts; opening with the Wheel,, the globe before interval, very high wire and flying trapeze in the second half.
But that didn’t help much in Capalaba (Covid-19 lockdowns) or Bundamba Racetrack (highly visible but three carnivals and the third circus this year, plus Covid-19 fears.)
Reluctantly, Cheryl Lennon pulled the pin after two weeks of a booked three. For a show that’s run from 1893, that hurt!
Circus Rio advertised a Toowoomba season to run almost to Christmas.
After all that, Queensland was the pick of it. At least they got to show.
It was poverty season South of the Border.
Shane and Nancy Lennon’s Hudson’s Circus holed up at Queanbeyan, cross the border from Canberra,
but were locked down and couldn’t cross the Border. The NSW side
was locked down, too,
Twenty kilometres away, Anton
and Anna Gasser’s Sesame Street production with Silver’s Circus
was quarantined in the national capital, unable to show or move for months.
THE OUTDOOR SHOWMAN 23