Looking like he has stepped out of a George Grosz painting, with a leering grin, there’s something of a bully about Waldo as he exhorts our applause from his wheelchair, and barracks the company for their amiable introductory round of Pierrot-styled clowning and funny business with a ladder. We see examples of love, camaraderie and heroism, but the beast of fascism lurks in the community too.Īt the start, Garry Robson’s ringmaster Waldo dismisses a plea for help from a Jewish counterpart, advising him that the trouble will all blow over.

Steeped in research, but weaving its own fiction, Waldo’s Circus of Magic & Terror, a new show spearheaded by Extraordinary Bodies, pioneers in diverse-led circus, gives us a ringside view of the predicaments of that dark decade and the logistical and ethical contortions they entailed. To continue as a troupe in such a climate was to put your head in the lion’s jaws. The complicating, paradoxical factor, of course, was that this sanctioned form of populist entertainment was peopled with the “non-Aryan” minorities – Jews, Roma and the disabled among them – that Hitler persecuted. Yes, in the Thirties the Fuhrer had a passion for the big-top. “He does not care much for wild animal acts, unless there is a woman in danger.” So runs a line in a 1943 CIA report into Hitler’s psychology and predilections, which contains fascinating details about his love of the circus.

Magic houdini