Pickle: Circus For A New Generation

The lights dim. Zzzip. Rapid-fire sax. Close-up: Queenie's ruffled rump. She and clown co-star, LaLa, simply climb onto the stage and already the Paramount Theatre audience - 98 percent children - is laughing.

It's the Pickle Family Circus - no big top, no elephants, no lions and tigers and ringmasters with whips. No pretensions. Instead there are gymnasts, aerialists, contortionists, jugglers and clowns extraordinaire.

This circus holds children's attention like a fast-paced cartoon.

With no animal acts, the San Francisco-based Pickle Family is one of several groups redefining circuses for the next generation. They opened yesterday and have performances scheduled for 2 and 7 p.m. today. Proceeds benefit Variety, the Children's Charity. (Tickets, $7.50-$15, are available through Ticketmaster, 628-0888.)

How does an unconventional circus rate with a circus-wise 8-year-old? Guest reviewer Jamie McDonald gives it five stars. ``But it's more like a play than a circus,'' he says.

The show is based on the saxophone war between LaLa, sweetly Chaplinesque, and Queenie Moon, the magnificently domineering Lucy Van Pelt of the clown set. Queenie tries to steal LaLa's prize saxophone when she's asleep - where else, but inside a piano. Somehow - and these things do happen in Clownland - she gets bonked on the head with the piano lid.

The succeeding acts of ``La La Luna Sea'' are dream sequences, involving the elusive sax, Queenie presiding over a variety of incarnations that could only happen in dreamland - or a circus.

The piano-bed becomes a boat, Queenie a sea monster, then queen of the lunar drill team.

Lithe Huang Zhen defies gravity with his ability to walk up and suspend himself from a pole. Zhuo Yue's ability to wear her feet as earmuffs amazes even the most flexible 5-year-olds. But they are secondary performers. This show is built around Joan Mankin (Queenie) and Diane Wasnak (LaLa).

It doesn't have the grand-scale, surrealistic drama of Cirque du Soleil, the French-Canadian nonanimal circus that played in Seattle last summer. And the theater needs more staff to help patrons find seats quickly. Ten minutes into the performance people were still trying to find seats, and much of Queenie's dialogue was impossible to hear even from the fifth row.

But it's tough to criticize the charming production.

``Queenie shouldn't have taken LaLa's saxophone. She was mean, mean, mean. But I like her anyway,'' our guest critic says.

He also is praising the wire walker, Ayin DeSela.

``At real circuses the bottom of their shoes has a slot for the wire to hook into. But here they can do it. She's got good balance. Look, she's wearing Aquasocks!

``I think if they call it a circus they should put in some animals,'' the Ringling-wise reviewer says. ``Some lions and seals, balancing balls on their noses. Some kids thought the stuff they did really weren't tricks. (We all can become human pretzels, right?) I thought they did neat tricks.''

And the worst thing about the show? ``When it was over.''