March 2017
The last time I went to the circus when it rolled into Philadelphia, I was in elementary school. When we heard that Ringling Brothers was shutting down the circus for good this year, we decided that we should go see its last hurrah. We splurged a little and got seats in the second row. There were two separate touring shows this year. The one that came to Philadelphia was "Out of this World." (The other being "Circus Xtreme.") Wow, what a difference from the last time I saw the show. I remember seeing Gunther Gable, elephants and a unicorn. I probably don't want to know what kind of animal rights violations were committed in the production of the unicorn, but I did miss the elephants. As for Gunther, there was a big cat trainer who was also quite good. The other surprising part was that besides the acrobats, clowns, contortionists, dog trainers, etc., a portion of the show was also performed on ice. Add some horse stunts, motorcycles in a steel sphere and a menagerie of animals including a kangaroo and you have quite a fun spectacle. It's really sad that this will be the last year that anyone will get to experience it.
