Showing up to the circus early is a little like doing the same thing at a big, elaborate wedding. You get to see what a place looks like before its overcome with pomp and spectacle. With Teatro Zinzanni, the elaborate single ring circus in permanent residence on top of the Cambria hotel high above the Loop’s theater district, that’s mostly a very good thing. It gives you plenty of time to absorb the scene.
Investors and planners spent months meticulously searching for a space large and tall enough to comfortably hold an opulent vestige of a bygone age; a spiegeltent or mirrored tent. Having set up similar venues in Seattle and San Francisco, they knew what they were looking for and found it across the street from Block 37 on Randolph in a space once used as a Masonic hall. Common in Europe during the early 1900’s, the tents with their lush appointments and beautifully stenciled mirrors are worlds within themselves. Despite their impressive size, they feel surprisingly intimate. Like those on the west coast, Chicago’s tent can hold as many as 300 guests as well as a legion of wait staff and performers. The soaring 29’ tent peak helps to keep things feeling spacious and perpetuates the air of the opulence that fills the enclosure. Except for the dining chairs. You’d expect the same gilded aura that permeates the expansive circle to carry over to them too. Instead they looked as if they were picked up wholesale from a defunct convention center; marring the splendor of the room. Once filled with bodies, they proved far less distracting. And they didn’t detract at all from the feeling that you’d traveled back through time when you crossed the threshold into the tent and into a land where anything could happen and cares and concerns are left at the door As more and more people arrived, two very unusual and unusually dressed people seem to be everywhere. One was in extravagant drag, crowned in a towering Marie Antoinette wig and sporting a racy tongue with a light southern drawl. The other, a very tall woman also with a German accent, was dressed as a naughty little Bo Peep who had a penchant for the risqué. At one moment, they’re across the room and in the next instant they’re standing directly in front of you speaking a language of insinuation.
A “dinner and a show” affair, there’s a lot of bustle at the beginning of a Teatro Zinzanni evening. Wait staff take orders for dinner that will be presented once the show begins and served continually throughout the night. Seating takes a lot time and you can sense preparations behind the scenes are going full throttle, too. Clowns with fire hoses whiz by and jubilant chaos seems to reign. Genuine excitement builds instinctively and when the show officially kicks off, you find out the drag queen, Doily (Kevin Kent) is the MC with a wit sharp enough to draw blood. And little Bo Peep transforms into a leggy dominatrix.
Sporting the theme, Love, Chaos and Dinner, the current Zinzanni production should not be considered suitable for children, even though there were a few presents on a recent weekend night. The tone is one of a free-wheeling comedy hour with enough sexual innuendo to keep the prudish on edge but never tilts over into lewd. More characters appeared like Voronin, who also goes by the Maestro, a charismatic illusionist who looked like he was channeling Bela Lugosi. Replete with cape, classic pinstripe tuxedo pants and spats, he was all presence and no sound as he glided around the room showering impressive magic.
Because of their unique talent needs, Teatro Zinzanni recruits the world, focusing on Europe, and sets its standards high. By the time the intrepid Rizo made her appearance, you’ve been primed for the exceptional. Choreographed like a series of building blocks that boost the audience’s subliminal exhilaration in finely measured increments, director Norman Langill injects loads of humor into the suspense that often drips from the acrobatic elements of the show. Langill, whose career has earned him an Emmy for writing and a lifetime achievement Grammy, specializes in productions with a multi-cultural dimension. Rizo, a New Yorker, flaunts the grand confidence of a Lizzo/Judy Garland mash up and seems as thrilled with the sound of her mega-voice exploding like a satin bomb as the audience. Her arrival also signals her takeover as mistress of ceremony and the beginning of the physical aspects of the show. Where even geriatrics revert to wide eyed children.
The acrobatics in the Love, Chaos, Dinner show are stunning and made more sumptuous by the relentless grace of their execution. Elayne Kramer, from Argentina, a flawless sylph in the rings, transformed from the comic charwoman she played earlier in the show to a captivating aerialist. Frenchman Domitil Aillot, who parodies a Parisian chef at the beginning of the production, defies gravity by floating up and down a vertical beam; his body perfectly perpendicular to the pole. “A full body workout in five minutes.” And brothers Fabio and Giuliano Anastasini, the 9th generation of circus performers in their family, were spellbinding with their unthinkable feats of body juggling. No matter how cosmopolitan or sophisticated one might feel themselves to be, the kind of entertainment Teatro Zinzanni creates is daunting in its celebration of the feats the human body can achieve.
To keep the productions fresh, the production undergoes a radical revamp approximately every quarter. The next one is scheduled to roll out in March. Sometimes changes are incremental when acts leave the show and new ones arrive or they can be more far reaching with multiple change outs occurring simultaneously. And there are stalwarts like the Anastasini brothers who’ve been with the Chicago operation since its arrival early this year.
Given how memorable the event will undoubtedly be for most of the people who visit it and the pre-eminence of the individual performers and performances, the evening’s price tag, $200 a person, is reasonable. The dinner that accompanies the show, especially the main entrée, strives to satisfy and it does. An appetizer, salad and dessert also make their ways to tables when the waitstaff isn’t doing stints as extras in all company skits.
As delightful as an evening at this version of a circus is, there are lingering concerns. Harvesting laughs could take a callous and unsavory turn. Too often those controlling the evening would use bald or balding men as foil for jokes. Choosing such targets is far too easy and unimaginative to the point of callousness.
Also, the audience of a mid-October show could not be considered particularly diverse. That’s why it was unusual that two of the four or five people chosen to “assist” the evening’s host were African-American. Generally, the interactions were handled well. But statements about a person’s perceived difficulty in blushing because of their skin color or comments that slid into sexual allusion could be considered both insensitive and rude. At the very least, they were unfortunate and made one wonder if they were indicative of the tenor of typical performances. Another visit, perhaps six months down the road, might provide that answer.
Teatro Zinzanni
Love, Chaos and Dinner
Cambria Hotel
32 W. Randolph St.
Chicago, IL 60601
312-488-0900
Zinzanni.com
