The circus life of Brian
Words | Neil Murray Working as a clown in Las Vegas is hardly a typical occupation for a 76-year-old man from Greater Manchester. But it’s old meets new as Brian Dewhurst teams up with Cirque du Soleil – and he’s in no hurry to retire BRIAN DEWHURST reached a turning point in his career at [...]
Words | Neil Murray
Working as a clown in Las Vegas is hardly a typical occupation for a 76-year-old
man from Greater Manchester. But it’s old meets new as Brian Dewhurst teams
up with Cirque du Soleil – and he’s in no hurry to retire
BRIAN DEWHURST reached a turning point in his
career at the age of 68 when he was asked if he
would like to turn back the clock to be a clown
with the legendary Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas.
“I’d come to the point [as artistic co-ordinator for the
show O] when I had to move on. My first wife had died
the night before the show opened and I’d stayed on for a
year after that, but I felt I needed a change. They came to
me and said: ‘Wayne the clown [in Mystère] can’t carry on
because he has a bad knee and it hasn’t worked out with a
couple of other people. Would you be interested?’ I said I’d
give it a go – and that was eight years ago.”
alt="Cirque du Soleil started in Quebec in 1984, as a small group of jugglers">
Returning to clowning wasn’t an easy decision, however.
For Brian, it brought back memories of the time when,
performing his comedy wire-walking act in 1984, he fell
and dislocated his shoulder. His daughter, Sally, ran into the
audience to ask if someone could phone the emergency St
John Ambulance – but they thought it was a joke and didn’t
believe her. In fact, no one did. So he jumped onto his
moped and drove himself, one-armed, to the hospital.
Now as a new, dazzling Cirque show opens at the other
end of ‘The Strip’ in Vegas next month, the 76-year-old
clown ‘Brian Le Petit’ will still be leading unwary punters a
merry dance around the auditorium, their tickets in hand,
trying – and failing – to find their seats before his show,
Mystère, gets under way.
As the crowd realises what’s happening, the laughter
increases, even more so when buckets of popcorn are
spilled ‘accidentally’ over unsuspecting members of the
audience. Later, midshow, he locks an unsuspecting male
in a box onstage and takes the victim’s seat beside his
wife or girlfriend.
alt="A battle scene from the Ka show">
If Criss Angel Believe, the new hi-tech, multi-milliondollar
illusionist show opening next month, is the latest,
edgy side of Cirque du Soleil, Brian’s act is the more
traditional. A comedy wire-walker by trade, Brian comes
from a circus family in which his great-grandfather was
an acrobat, his grandfather a clown, and his father a
knife-thrower and rope-spinner. And the genes still carry
this passion. His daughter, Sally, now 42, a former British
international gymnast, performed with Cirque, and his son,
Nicky, 38, appears in Zumanity, another successful Cirque
show in Vegas.
When his children were growing up in the UK, Brian
recalls: “We always had a wire up in the garden. It was
mainly for me to practise, but Sally and Nicky would jump
on it, too. Sally has said she realised her family was slightly
different when she saw me cutting the hedge on stilts.”
The dynasty looks set to continue. “Two of my four
grandchildren [aged between 12 months to 12 years] are
very good gymnasts,” he says, proudly.
alt="the waterbowl from Zumanity">
Born in Longside, between Stockport and Manchester,
Brian left school at the age of 13 to hit the road as a
performer, a journey that has included touring Africa
by rail for a year in his mid-teens and travelling around
Europe with a variety of circuses. In the mid-1980s, he was
involved in the UK with an ‘alternative’ group called Circus
Senso. It led to the connection with Cirque du Soleil,
and appearances with Sally and Nicky in the first Cirque
show to take Las Vegas by storm. That was Nouvelle
Experience, which was performed in a tent behind The
Mirage hotel.
When Mystère, the first permanent Cirque show in Sin
City, opened in December 1994, Brian was the artistic coordinator,
a role he has subsequently performed with O in
Vegas and a touring Saltimbanco.
Now, 14 years on from that opening night, Brian reckons
there is plenty of fresh showmanship about Las Vegas that
is exciting. There are some great acts coming here. Carrot
Top, for example, is a very good music hall-type of act,”
he says.
“The Blue Man Group is part of, for argument’s sake, the
new wave, and there are now many shows being brought
in from Broadway. I think the first was Chicago and, since
then, there has been Spamalot, Mamma Mia and Phantom
– but they all condense the shows to about an hour-anda-
half.
“It used to be that we had to go out of the city to get
good dining and shows. Now everyone has come to us,
including high-end restaurants, West End/Broadway shows
– and British food items!”
However much razzmatazz there now is, Brian can still
escape, because he has a condominium in town and a
split-level chalet set in half an acre of land in the Mount
Charleston area, north-west of Las Vegas.
“I hit the highway, turn off and it’s 20 miles up the
mountains,” he says. He relaxed there recently following
a knee injury. The odd bump or bruise is an occupational
hazard when you’re a clown.
“Having been involved in circuses since I was 13, there
hasn’t been a year when I haven’t worked,” he adds. And
retirement?
“When I can’t do it any more, that’s the retirement age.
Hopefully, that’s a long way away.”
Cirque is still evolving
Having such a long link to Cirque du Soleil, how would
Brian describe the current Cirque shows in town?
“Ka is the most technically advanced,” he says. “It cost
a fortune but the technology is just amazing, as are the
performances.
“With Love [set to the music of the Beatles], it’s the first
time Cirque had put on a show without live music, but the
sound is incredible, and O is very visual in content. The
director wanted to have the appearance of looking at a
theatre like an opera, like a proscenium arch theatre.
“Mystère, of course, is much more intimate because it’s
almost in the semi-round.”
And Zumanity, which stars son Nicky?
“It’s just very naughty.”
Brian’s (serious) restaurant tips
During his long career there, Brian Dewhurst has seen a dramatic rise in the number
of top-quality restaurants in Las Vegas. “They have so many top chefs now,” he says.
“Wolfgang Puck has a couple of restaurants and the Chinese restaurant at Wynn Las
Vegas [Wing Lei, +1 (0)702 248 3463, www.wynnlasvegas.com]
is the first Chinese restaurant in the US to be awarded a Michelin star. So the quality of restaurants and
dining has improved dramatically.
“Of my favourites, Marché Bacchus [www.marchebacchus.com,
+1 (0)702 804 8008] is a little French restaurant on one of the faux lakes, and I think Le Cirque restaurant
[+1 (0)702 693 8100, www.bellagio.com/restaurants] in the Bellagio is one of the top
ones in the city.”
WHAT’S NEXT ON THE STRIP?
The new Vegas face: Criss Angel
THE 21st century face of Las Vegas is Criss Angel (below), a new breed of rockstar-
like magician who has more in common with Tommy Lee than Paul Daniels.
The most buzz-worthy new addition to the Vegas shows is Criss Angel Believe. The
city’s sixth and latest permanent Cirque du Soleil show, it has its gala premiere next
month at the Luxor Las Vegas.
And among the ladies vying for a place as Angels’ lovely assistant in real life? He
dated Hollywood actress Cameron Diaz (inset) last year, which included taking her
for a night out at the Beatles’ Love musical, and has been linked to Paris Hilton and
Britney Spears. Angel was originally scheduled to perform a mirror illusion as part
of Spears’ disastrous performance of her single Gimme More at the opening of the
2007 MTV awards, but he pulled a different kind of illusion and didn’t appear at all,
reportedly for insurance reasons.
Criss Angel Mindfreak, his MTV show, has been hailed as the
“most successful magic show in TV history” and Angel is the five
times winner of the Magician of the Year award in the States.
Aside from his ability to generate tabloid gossip, Angel has
made his name as a dazzling illusionist, with 600 performances
of his Criss Angel Mindfreak live show on Broadway. His past
tricks have included walking on water, levitating and floating
between Las Vegas hotel buildings, and cutting himself in half in full
view of his audience (rather than a female assistant – no wonder he’s a hit with
the ladies.)
As for Criss Angel Believe, he is not giving much away, but he claims the show will
be “unlike anything that anybody has ever seen before”.
“The images on stage will ignite responses that cause people to reflect – and I
think that’s the truest form of magic,” he says. The only further detail he will offer
is that the show will “hover between the land of the living and a surreal world”. That
clears that up, then…
For tickets: +1 (0)702 262 4400, www.luxor.com/entertainment/entertainment_believe.aspx
- Terry Fator, the winner of America’s Got Talent, who combines
ventriloquism with celebrity impressions, starts a five-days-aweek,
five-year contract at The Mirage in February next year. - The seventh permanent Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas
– Mystère, O, Ka, Zumanity, Love and Criss Angel Believe are the
others – will bring Elvis Presley back to the city that saw some of
his most-famous performances. The Elvis/Cirque show, expected
to open in November next year, will be part of the $9.2 billion,
66-acre CityCenter hotel-casino development currently in
construction. - Musicians with scheduled stops in Vegas include Led Zeppelin
(17 October), Tom Jones (30 October – 12 November) and Madonna
(9 November). Artists in long-term engagements include Cher, Barry
Manilow, Elton John, Penn and Teller and Bette Midler.
