‘Oops!’ Successfully Blends Magic of Theater, Circus

With so many circuses trying to be more theatrical nowadays, it only makes sense that one of them is cementing the connection by imagining what might happen if a circus and a theatrical troupe were booked into the same venue on the same night.

That’s the premise of “Oops!,� the Big Apple Circus’ attempt to make itself more widely known by touring a show that can play in theaters instead of a big top. It brings the 23-year-old New York circus to Southern California for the first time, with a stop in Cerritos through Sunday and in San Diego next week.

As the show began Tuesday in its Cerritos opener, the many young members of the audience must have wondered whether their parents had brought them to the right theater when a histrionic stage director announced “scenes from Shakespeare’s lovers and villains� as the scheduled entertainment. Up went the curtain on the death scene from “Romeo and Juliet�--soon interrupted by the arriving circus performers.

And so it goes, with circus acts upstaging Shakespeare again and again until, finally, the two sides begin working together. The gag works particularly well as the theater director (Norman Barrett) sets out to perform Hamlet’s Yorick soliloquy, only to find a rival Hamlet (Paul Ponce) already occupying the stage. The gravedigger’s tossing out a soccer ball in addition to Yorick’s skull is the cue for the rival Hamlet to reveal himself as a master juggler. Ponce sends clubs spinning behind his back and under his legs, then makes straw hats sail like Frisbees over the front rows of the audience and return to him like boomerangs.

An act like Ponce’s--small-scale yet thrillingly skillful--is perfect for the space limitations encountered in putting a circus on stage. So is Justin Case’s clownish bicycle act, which finds him muttering to himself in French each time his wayward bicycle self-destructs and leaves him to fit the pieces back together, then figure out how to ride the strange new hybrid vehicles that he’s misconstructed.

Nice, too, is an “Arabian Nights�-themed act that has Olga Kurziamov striking graceful, midair arabesques while dangling from powerful husband Vladimir--who strikes his own gravity-defying poses while hanging from straps.

On the whole, however, there’s not enough air space for the aerial acts to seem heart-stoppingly high overhead, nor enough runway for the acrobatic acts to achieve the spectacular liftoff of those regularly showcased by Cirque du Soleil.

Still, the show--staged by theatrical designer-director Tony Walton--is more easily accessible to young children than Cirque, and there’s an irresistible appeal to the notion that both the circus and the theater possess a magic that makes people want to run off and join them.

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* “Oops! The Big Apple Circus Stage Show,� Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive. Today-Friday, 7 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 2 and 7 p.m. $20-$47. (800) 300-4345, (562) 916-8500. San Diego Civic Theatre, 3rd Avenue and B Street. Tuesday-next Thursday, 7:30 p.m.; June 2, 8 p.m.; June 3, 2 and 8 p.m.; June 4, 1 and 6 p.m. $17-$44.50. (619) 570-1100, (619) 220-TIXS. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.