Review: WATER FOR ELEPHANTS at Keller Auditorium

The circus has rolled into town! The national tour of WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, based on Sara Gruen’s 2006 best-selling novel, has pitched its big top in the Keller Auditorium, arriving with all of the promised spectacle. With a book by Rick Elice and music and lyrics by Pigpen Theatre Co., this musical is a feast for the eyes.

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS is a memory musical. Now in his old age, Mr. Jankowski (Robert Tully) looks back on the time during the Great Depression when he semi-accidentally ran away with the circus. Through his recollections, we meet his younger self, Jacob Jankowski (Zachary Keller). Jacob is just shy of earning his veterinary degree at Cornell when his parents are killed in a sudden car crash. Reeling, he leaps aboard a passing train.

That train belongs to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a circus that falls well short of its grand name. Once the owners learn of his training, Jacob is taken on as the veterinarian for the show's animals. He finds himself drawn to Marlena (Helen Krushinski), the circus's star horsewoman. There is just one problem: she is married to August (Connor Sullivan), the boss.

Rounding out the circus family is a colorful crew. Camel (Javier Garcia) is a hard-drinking lifer whose working days are numbered. Wade (Grant Hunneycutt) is the muscle, Walter (Tyler West) is the clown and fifth generation knife thrower, and Barbara (Yemie Woo, an understudy who went on the night I saw it) presides over the “cooch tent.” And, of course, there are the animals, including Marlena's horse, Silver Star (Yves Artières) and, most important of all, Rosie, the elephant the struggling circus buys as its last hope for survival.

The first time I saw WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, in its original Broadway production, I was swept up in its illusions (I’m a sucker for a circus). At its heart, illusion is what this show is about: the often stark gap between how things appear and how they really are. This gap can take different forms. From the outside, the circus is wonder-filled and magical, but behind the scenes there is dysfunction. The production also plays with this gap in a joyful way through its animals. Rosie first appears as nothing more than a pair of ears. Piece by piece, she is built up to her full glory, and the space between suggestion and reality fills in before our eyes.

This time around, I found myself drawn more to the relationships and the nature of memory, because this is also a love story on many levels. There is love between lovers and love between friends. There is the love that binds a tight-knit group and the love between people and animals. Finally, there’s the love of nostalgia that colors every memory Mr. Jankowski revisits and shows how memory reshapes what we’ve been through.

Whatever lens you bring, the production’s visual storytelling carries it. It is absolutely gorgeous to look at. The puppet design by Ray Wetmore, Junior Goodman, and Camille Labarre takes a minimalist approach to maximum effect. Circus is woven throughout, both in the acts performed within the story and in the choreography itself, where performers are constantly spinning, flipping, and being tossed through the air as if gravity doesn’t exist. One highlight is the song "Easy," which Marlena sings to Silver Star while the actor portraying the horse performs a ropes routine, demonstrating how emotionally evocative this type of movement can be.

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS is a crowd-pleaser, especially for anyone who still feels like a kid when the circus comes to town. Step right up and enjoy the show.

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS runs through October 4. Details and tickets here.

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