If I Ran the Circus

This two-handed salute to creative thinking is absolutely afire. With a dazzling array of fey Seuss animals and verse worth setting to music -- a classroom full of 5-year-olds swayed to the cadences of the rhyme -- no interest will be caught flagging. The names Seuss has bestowed on his animals -- the Zoom-a-Zoop Troupe from West Upper Ben-Deezing, the Harp-Twanging Snarp, the Juggling Jot, which juggles twenty-two question marks -- are among his very finest. The sense of being right there under the big top is tangible: You can almost hear the calliope over the Seussian din.

Mr. Sneelock pretty much steals the show, puffing away on his pipe, his eyelids down as if he's in a doze. He starts as a drink vendor, moves up to be a fall guy for various animal acts, then takes to the center ring in a series of death-defying feats.