SHAKESPEARE AT THE CIRCUS? PAIR OFFERS TRUNKLOADS OF FUN

The Utah Shakespearean Festival's 1994 season is history.

Diehard Shakespeare fans won't find much to enjoy until "Macbeth" comes along later this year at Brigham Young University or "Twelfth Night" in February at Pioneer Memorial Theatre.Or you could take in a performance by Romeo and Juliette next week when the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus rolls into town at the Delta Center.

Romeo and Juliette?

Well, maybe this twosome isn't quite what the Bard of Avon had in mind when he wrote about the star-crossed Italian lovers, but you can bet the circus version has a happier ending.

Last year, Pioneer Theatre Company tried "nontraditional casting" when it staged Shakespeare's classic. Juliet's family, the Capulets, were Caucasian, while Romeo's kinfolk, the Montagues, were black.

Well, try this on for size: The romantic adolescents in the spotlight next week are . . . well . . . to be blunt, they're a couple of animals. They're not black. They're not white. They're in between . . . gray skin (fairly tough and bristly), with long, long noses. If that's not bad enough, Juliette is an older woman!

Talk about "nontraditional."

Maybe I should clarify things a bit.

Juliette (yes . . . that is the correct spelling) is a cute-as-a-bug's-ear baby pachyderm, born Dec. 30, 1992, at the circus's Elephant Farm in central Florida. She was named after circus president and producer Kenneth Feld's 9-year-old daughter - hence the slightly different spelling.

Less than two weeks later, on Jan. 10, 1993, Romeo was born.

Juliette, who weighed in at a bouncing 198 pounds and 3 ounces, with a newborn height of 38 1/2 inches, is the offspring of Icky, one of the circus's more than 50 pachyderms. Romeo, who tipped the scales at 227 pounds and 10 ounces (41 inches high), was born to Alana.

Both of these blessed events took place in the farm's Birthing Barn - and both mothers are also touring with the circus.

Now, I'm not sure if the Birthing Barn is as palatial as some of the splendid new rooms you find these days in many hospitals. No chintz curtains on the windows. No lounge chair for Dad. Maybe just extra-soft straw on the floor.

If Juliette's father did any pacing back and forth, it was probably somewhere else on the farm.