THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO
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At times Mula comes oh-so-close. Unfortunately he undermines these moments by giving less than heartfelt readings of the more pedestrian, strictly human scenes leading up to them. The nice gal in me wants to cut him some slack. After all, it’s not easy playing some 15 different characters in less than two hours. But Mula is a seasoned and highly skilled actor and shouldn’t be coddled. He seems to treat his characters unfairly, lavishing attention on the interesting circus creatures and throwing only a contemptuous glance at the townsfolk. As a result the show doesn’t really heat up until the second act, and the point of the story gets buried under Mula’s bad attitude.
The Circus of Dr. Lao is about what happens when the people in a small town–Abalone, Arizona–come into contact with genuinely magical creatures: a sexually enticing satyr, a Medusa, a 2,000-year-old magician, a werewolf, a mermaid, a sea serpent, and of course Dr. Lao himself. In the first 20 minutes Mula transforms himself into almost every person in Abalone who goes to the circus, from an uptight English teacher, Miss Agnes Birdsong, to Quarantine Inspector Number One to the whole Rogers family to a couple of cops.
