With ​“Sherlock,” The Circus Stays In Town

Three metal rings were suspended from the ceiling of the theater. Three women in white robes began in front of them, in a small group; they tumbled, re-formed, became statues. Applause from Saturday night’s full house at ECA’s theater on Audubon Street. Then the women each took a ring and spun in them aloft, dancing in the air. More applause. The woman in the middle descended from her ring and hit the floor.

She turned out to be a contortionist, folding herself in half, into a ring herself.

Even more applause. Then the lights went out. There was a quick scene change, and Sherlock Holmes hit the stage.

So Brianna Lachapelle, Sarah Jane Barney, and Kalena Trow began Sherlock Holmes and the Sapphire Night, a production by Cirqularity that told its story — the case of a kidnapping, solved, naturally, by literature’s greatest detective — through drama and circus. Think a musical, but instead of breaking into song, the characters performed circus routines, and like all good musicals, that one logical break not only made sense, but opened the door to a thrilling mode of expression.

Sherlock Holmes was co-written and produced by Stacey Kigner and Meghan Magner. Kigner, who owns and runs Air Temple Arts, an aerial dance and circus studio in New Haven, also served as director. Magner starred as the titular detective. As Kigner’s program note explained, she ​“became fixated on the idea of a gender-bent Sherlock Holmes over a year ago. It started simply enough — a Sherlock Holmes show would be fun, and my new, creative co-conspirator would make a fantastic Sherlock. When I cast another woman as Watson in my mind, I realized that the show could be something more than simply ​‘fun.’” And ​“as Meghan and I got down to writing the script, we realized that we had quite a bit to say.”

Kigner was right on all counts. Making Holmes, Watson (Megan Mallouk), and in fact the entire cast women — with one dramatic exception (Nicholas Cegelka) — allowed Kigner and Magner to make a running commentary on the status of women in Victorian England and today, and in particular, to cut into the question of what it is to be a woman working in a world dominated by men.

That made Sherlock Holmes as smart as it was entertaining — and it was very entertaining indeed. As Watson, Mallouk was the quiet soul of the show, the humane side of the kidnapping investigation that led, inexorably, to Cegelka’s wonderfully hammy villain, and to a possible romance with Abigail Thorne (Jillian Marchenko), whose sister Eugenia (Barney) was one of the victims. Magner owned the stage as the fiercely intelligent and independent Holmes, too quick for everyone around here and almost never at a loss for words.

But the real star of the show was the circus itself; the routines always moved the plot forward even as they provided the thrills, chills, and awe for the performers’ skill (and fear for their safety) that good circus shows all have in common. A bustling street scene was an opportunity for a hoop diving and tumbling routine that conveyed the sense of London’s chaos. Cegelka’s Chinese pole routine deepened his character’s villainy. Perhaps most effective, Marchenko’s balletic aerial silks routine portrayed Abigail’s grief at the loss of her sister, and Magner’s and Mallouk’s whirling, intensely acrobatic Spanish web routine portrayed Holmes and Watson on the case — Holmes literally high as a kite, performing feats that few others in the room would dare try, and Watson literally grounding her, helping her fly and making sure she comes back to earth in one piece.

This effective marriage of theater and circus is the third such production mounted in collaboration with Air Temple Arts, following 2015’s Special Relativity and 2016’s Reverie in Black and White; all of them have run for a weekend in February at the ECA Arts Hall on Audubon Street. The circus world is losing one of its most visible companies, as Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus will perform its last show in May. Traveling circuses are sometimes hard to find (though they have visited New Haven). Thus it’s something to celebrate that the Elm City has its own homegrown circus that performs in the heart of downtown — and with Air Temple Arts just up the road, you don’t have to run away to join it.