Isabella Rossellini returns as ringmaster in Link Link Circus at Hunter College (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)
Hunter College
The Frederick Loewe Theatre
930 Lexington Ave. at 68th St.
April 18 – May 3, students $10-$15, adults $37-$42
www.huntertheaterproject.org
hunter.cuny.edu
Independent Spirit Award winner Isabella Rossellini is the creator and star of the thoroughly charming and wholly educational one-woman, one-dog show Link Link Circus, which continues at Hunter College’s Frederick Loewe Theatre through May 3. Ten years ago, her surprise hit web series Green Porno delighted the internet with inventive, low-budget costumes, videos, and props to explore the mating rituals of animals, and she premiered a live version of the show in 2014. Following that exploration “below the waist,” as she puts it, in Link Link Circus Rossellini, who is currently working on her master’s degree in animal behavior and conservation at Hunter and runs an organic farm in Bellport, seeks to answer the question: “Can animals think and feel?” Serving as ringmaster, Rossellini uses wacky humor, playfully silly costumes, cardboard cutouts of such scientists and philosophers as Socrates, B. F. Skinner, and René Descartes, a toy circus train, and other oddities to take a look at animals from the waist up instead of the waist down, concentrating primarily on intelligence, the mind, and consciousness.
She is joined by her dog, Peter Pan — named after the fictional character who doesn’t want to grow up, which matches Rossellini’s approach to the eighty-minute show — who performs numerous tricks, and set designer, composer, puppeteer, and costume designer Andy Byers, who handles many of the props, as she examines how bees dance, how chickens respond to stimuli, and how female ducks control their fertilization desires, with quirky animation by Courtney Pure. Rossellini, who wrote and codirects the show with Guido Torlonia (Handmade Cinema, The Tribute to Ingrid Bergman), is warm and engaging in her role as host and ringmaster, connecting with the audience even as she was fighting a bad cold the night we went. There’s a sweet Pee-wee’s Playhouse vibe to the production and the feeling that anything can happen at any moment, which belies the classic W. C. Fields adage “Never work with children or animals.” An enormous amount of fun, Link Link Circus is also affordable, with no tickets more than $42, part of Gregory Mosher’s new Hunter Theater Project initiative. [Ed. note: The above promotional video is for a previous run of the show at a different venue, but we included it here to give you a good sense of what it is all about.]