The Good Time Dispatch: Up, Up, Up
Event reporting by Nigel O’Shea
What: Up Up Up Circus
Where: Finn River Farm and Cidery, 124 Center Road, Chimacum
When: Sunday, July 28th at 5 pm
How much: $5-25 (Always) by donation
Drank: OP Dry cider, root beers
Ate: Dented Buoy Pizza, zucchini, tomatoes and onions woodfired
Sat: towards the back in lawn chairs
Bathroom lines: Long
Evening weather: pleasant, with a bit of cloud cover, so my neck didn’t burn
Overall time had: good 8.5 outta 10
On their fourth pass through the Olympic Peninsula, Up Up Up Circus filled the field at Finn River for another rousing spectacle centered around a truck with a crane. While the feats on the trapeze and balance blocks drew big applause, the real currency for Up Up Up is the imaginative absurdity that never lets up on the silliness!
The show's arcing plot involved the MC, Dan (Sadye Osterloh), losing the keys to the truck (the main stage) which then gets repeatedly ticketed (the audience loved booing the meter maid). Other bits included a guided self-love meditation which culminated in a Whitney Houston sing-along (“and I eee I will always love ME”) and the Stabby Box Illusion From the Eighties (it’s exactly what it sounds like).
MC Dan didn’t disappoint, ending the show with a rendition of the crowd favorite “I gotta mop”, reworked for the key theme as “I gotta fob” (I can’t believe it, it’s the best day of my life!) If you know, you know. What impresses me about a good circus is the teamwork and the multifaceted talents of each of the performers. UP, UP UP is a compact, fast-moving, and efficient outfit with the action never leaving the truck and crane and with every number featuring live musical accompaniment by the non performing cast.
You can’t just be funny, you have to be strong, and Svetlana (Tanya Gagné), Manny (Jill Marissa), Alvin (Cuream Jackson), Sari (Sari Breznau), Flower (Noa Schnitzer), Dan, and Little Danny Jr (Matthew “Poki” McCorkle) proved tough as nails, creating unique feats of mime, hand balancing, dance, acrobatics and trapeze. The comedy had me guffawing out loud which I will admit isn’t that hard to do. Regardless, I look forward to seeing more dazzling spins on the old crane if the circus comes to town next year.
All photos by Nigel O’Shea
