‘Circus 1903’ brings emotional, old-school entertainment to Paris Las Vegas

By Brock Radke (contact)

Thursday, July 6, 2017 | 2 a.m.

Finally, Simon Painter is coming back to Las Vegas. “I performed 15 years ago as a fiddle player in Las Vegas,” says the producer behind Circus 1903, which will debut at Paris Las Vegas on July 25. “I lived in the Golden Nugget for nine months while I was with Spirits of the Dance, which was a lower-tier Irish dance show. I had another life as a fiddler.”

That was a long time ago. In recent years Painter and his Works Entertainment company has been producing large-scale, touring theatrical shows, but his newest will be the first time one of them has landed in Las Vegas. “These shows have done very well in many different parts of the world and many of them have been more commercial and would suit Vegas well, but for whatever reason, timing or touring, we’ve never managed to do this, so it’s quite exciting,” he says.

Circus 1903 is exciting for Vegas on several levels. Coming off successful runs in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, the production is unlike anything on the Strip. “This is not some dreamy, ethereal proscenium entertainment, designed to capitalize on the perennial appeal of Cirque du Soleil. This is dat-dat-dada-dada-dada circus,” writes Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune in a show review.

It’s called Circus 1903 — The Golden Age of Circus because it’s set in that time period and showcases the gritty, intense, Turn of the Century era of showbusiness; the opening acts feature trucks, props and rigging as the circus tent and flagpoles are raised to the roof of the Paris Theater. “We wanted to take the circus back to its roots and focus on showmanship,” Painter says. “There is a beginning, a middle and an ending, but there is no story, it’s just exactly like the show in 1903 was, as close as we can get with modern production elements to give it some grandeur.”

Painter’s life has been all about massive touring productions and the complicated process of transportation, setting up, putting on a show, breaking it down, getting back on the road and doing it all over again. Circus 1903 is the same thing, without today’s conveniences. “That’s what was most fascinating to us when we were studying this period,” Painter says. “They traveled with 1,500 people and several hundred animals, city by city, day by day. We want to try to go back to that moment and that show and see what it was like.”

The most buzzed-about element of the show — which ends its North American tour this weekend but will launch a second touring unit next year as the original production continues in Las Vegas — is the elephants. You can’t have a circus without elephants. There’s a ringmaster, of course, and daredevil acts operating on the only tour-able high wire rig in the country, but the performing African elephant and her baby have garnered the greatest emotional response, according to Painter and many reviews. The producers teamed with the award-winning puppeteers from War Horse to design and create large-scale elephant puppets that have been hailed for their design and expression as the mother teaches her calf the tricks of the trade.

“We are cautiously optimistic that we’ll have a great run because of the show’s uniqueness and how new it is, and we’re in a really great venue centrally positioned on the Strip,” Painter says. “One of the things that makes me feel maybe more confident than I should is how tremendously well this show does by word of mouth. With all the online reviews these days, Vegas consumers are very savvy about what they see, and audiences are pretty quick to point out when they don’t like something. We’re going to give it our best shot.”

Tickets start at $49 and are on sale now for Circus 1903, which will play at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, and at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, in the Paris Theater at Paris Las Vegas beginning on July 25.