Page 24 - The Outdoor Showman January-March 2024

CIRCUS NEWS
2024: Happy Days! (Triplets!)
Two years of lockdowns, one of recovery, and now Happy Days are here again!
So much so, that Shane and Nancy Lennon’s Hudson’’s Circus is now triplets.
After a substantial 2003 around regional cities in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, Hudson’s backed up with
a packed-house January season at Southport Broadwater, Queensland. The decision had already been
made: “strike while the iron’s hot.” So, with a lot of spare equipment, a
new tent from Italy, quality performers queueing up to join, and grounds booked around southern Queensland, they pressed the “Go” button.
Now they have TWO Hudson’s Circuses. The original “gold” unit opened Robina Shopping Centre, Gold Coast, Thursday, February 29 to Sunday March 17.
The new ‘red’ unit opened Friday February 23 to Sunday March 17.
Both two-hour shows feature two-
tent set-ups, full flying trapeze troupe, ponies, dogs, Wheel of Death, sight acts, aerials, South American high-speed jugglers, ballets, comedy-clowning.
But wait, there’s more.
Scandalous
The third unit, ‘Scandalous’, is cabaret- circus, building on the market Pepe Ashton’s ‘Infamous’ built over the past five years throughout Australia.
Back from three months in Southern USA, Infamous played a couple of Queensland sites, re-opened at Albury, they went on to win “best attraction”
at Adelaide Fringe Festival, before an extensive NSW tour, beginning in the Hunter Valley. Doing business, too. ‘Scandalous’, also an 18-years-and- over licensed performance, draws much of its talent from Warren and Danielle Lennon’s award-winning Studio of Performing Arts, at Springfield, now the largest dance studio on Brisbane’s south side.
Top dance numbers are choreographed by Danielle and their international ballet star son Jordan Lennon,
and there’s a big ballet.
There’s also big-gear acrobatic and contortion numbers, soubrette, skill sight-acts, comedy-clowns, aerials, vaudeville-style audience participation numbers, and table service.
But don’t think Hudson’s have
Brisbane to themselves!
Webers
Harry and Maree Weber played a four-week season at the Orion Centre, Springfield (Ipswich) for the January School Holidays. Big success!
THE Circus (Webers) features several of their eight children (all excellent!), and probably the biggest array of big-gear acts ever assembled in Australia.
The first of four production
dance numbers opens the show, leading straight into the human cannon, first big-gear item.
There’s a great new Ukrainian
clown, who does four non-speaking production numbers, including
a show-stopping water act, with
his wife as straight-lead.
(They found them performing in top European Circuses and signed them on the spot!) The teenage son does
a high-speed unicycle act, too.
Then the show rigs the most complicated ramp system, that goes ten metres in the air and launches four high-speed bikes to do aerial tricks (loop the loop!) and land outside the back door. Show-stopper!
Of course there are aerial
numbers, and good ones, too.
Second half, Globe of Death
with three riders in a globe that splits open halfway - the act you’ve heard about in top overseas circuses.
And if you think you’ve seen it
all by now, there’s more.
Phyllis Ashton, OAM
Performer Rex Allison & Family
In a Big Top with the best-engineered trusses anyone’s ever seen, out comes
a huge piece of gear that gets hauled
up into the top 15 metres of height.
It’s a double circle that becomes a running track for a motorcycle, and it has a long lever-balance with rigging for all the tricks a perch-pole girl used to do. This girl does them while the motorbike hauls her around the top at high speed. At one stage, the motorbike
does cartwheels up there.
Top act, new to Australia.
Weber’s have never put on an under- produced show, and this one’s a cracker! Victoria
Ten years ago, there was a circus
on every corner of Melbourne.
Now, that’s Brisbane.
The four shows around Victoria last Christmas all report good business. Silver’s repeated their traditional
stand outside the shoe factory at Rosebud. Melbourne loves ‘em.
Damien Syred’s Circus Royale paid some of Australia.’s highest ground rents to be at Burnley Oval for January, but came out of it with a smile.
Webers
Tony and Kathy Maynard’s Eroni’s
Circus draws big support from Melbourne because of its traditional Australian content: whips, ropes, bounce-juggling, well-trained
horses, dogs, situation clowning,
aerials and smooth production.
They were at Wonthaggi, Feb
Hair hang at Stardust
Telescope: Bob Brice, Warren & Jordan Lennon
Cirque du Soleil cape
Hudson’s Circus on site
22 THE OUTDOOR SHOWMAN