Review: New circus show ‘Dear San Francisco’ is love letter to city and the human body

When performers land, with a boom or a plop, the reverberation sometimes ripples all the way to you in your seat.

“Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story,” the new circus show from the creators of the 7 Fingers in Montreal, premieres at Club Fugazi in San Francisco on Tuesday, Oct. 12. Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

Club Fugazi has become a jazz and poetry cabaret, but one where performers read stirring lines from the Beats before diving through a dangling hoop, each acrobat zhushing the twists and turns of the jump with his, her or their unique showmanship and aura.

In another moment, the freshly renovated North Beach venue has morphed into a playground for a human with insect capabilities, as one performer bops along the interior perimeter of the gleaming white proscenium — up the wall, then upside down, supported by his castmates.

“Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story” has taken over the space of the long-running “Beach Blanket Babylon.” Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

In still another scene, the former home of “Beach Blanket Babylon” has become the site of performance art. Audio from a “Maltese Falcon” scene plays while performers Devin Henderson and Natasha Patterson dance out, with full-body flings and spasms, the sexual tension that Mary Astor and Humphrey Bogart confine to gazes and vocal trembles in the film — all while juggling up to five gleaming crystal-ball-size pearls.

Such is the next chapter of circus in the Bay Area heralded by “Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story,” the new show from Shana Carroll and Gypsy Snider, co-founders of Montreal’s famed the 7 Fingers.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed, welcoming the Tuesday, Oct. 12, audience — unmasked just to deliver the introduction, which she quipped she got permission from the Public Health Department to do — lauded the opening night as a turning point in the city’s battle against COVID-19.

“This is a long time coming,” she said. “We have been in the house for almost two years.”

San Francisco Mayor London Breed addresses the audience before the premiere of “Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story” at Club Fugazi in San Francisco. Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

“Dear San Francisco” is an apt flagship for arts reopening. The show casts itself as a valentine to the city, incorporating readings of actual love letters to the city, some anonymous, some from celebrities, some from each night’s audience members. Often, these charming missives segue cleverly into acts. A letter that reads, “Thank you for being the place I felt safe to come out,” inspires a hand-to-trap (short for hand-to-trapeze, a form that Carroll invented) sequence with non-heterosexual pairings and throuplings.

But sometimes the canned homages to the city feel better suited to tourist audiences who might seek to confirm their pre-existing San Francisco stereotypes rather than to the high art to which the rest of the show aspires. There are filler lines about how expensive the city is, how hard it is to find parking; there’s shtick about psychedelic drugs, about how many kinds of milk there are and the anxious people trying to choose among them.

Opening night of “Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story.” Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

In any case, performers’ athleticism, precision and inventiveness quickly overshadow any clinkers.

Enmeng Song on the diabolo, which is derived from the Chinese yo-yo, can create the illusions of levitation and locomotion; he can whip his device’s axle off its string and then lasso it again midair.

Junru Wang, balancing upside down on very tall stools each as wide as the palm of the hand, seems to have radial symmetry, like a starfish; you’re looking at her straight on, of course, but it’s as if you have a bird’s-eye view of her swimming in the ocean.

Jake Rodriguez’s sumptuously textured sound design only heightens that effect; you can practically picture individual waves cresting.

Melvin Diggs (bottom), Devin Henderson and Natasha Patterson in “Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story.” Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

Seeing circus in an intimate venue means you can appreciate anew how much strength and discipline and grace goes into each effect — the way acrobats mount a trapeze with seemingly little more than a held breath, a glance upward and a wish for it; the way pectorals and even facial muscles twitch when one performer hoists two others on his shoulders; the way diaphragms pump in search of more oxygen.

You can feel the effects, too. When performers land, with a boom or a plop, the reverberation sometimes ripples all the way to your seat.

Performers show off their strength and agility in “Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story.” Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

Ultimately, “Dear San Francisco” is a love letter not just to the city but also to the human body, reminding even the much less lithe among us that our arms and legs are tools and shapes we perhaps forget to use creatively.

As sleek and smart as Alexander V. Nichols’ production design is, with its frequent use of projections, “Dear San Francisco” is refreshingly low-tech, with performers frequently contributing their own singing voices and instruments — accordion, banjo, drum. They bring out the art and life in all they touch: A pole, a teeterboard, a set of straw hats, a unicycle, a phone booth all become small miracles.

N“Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story”: Created and directed by Shana Carroll and Gypsy Snider. Ongoing. One hour, 45 minutes. $35-$89. Club Fugazi, 678 Green St., S.F. 415-273-0600. www.clubfugazisf.com

  • Lily Janiak
    Lily Janiak Lily Janiak is The San Francisco Chronicle’s theater critic. Email: ljaniak@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LilyJaniak