It isn’t very often that one sees a Broadway musical featuring circus performers. In “Water for Elephants,” playing at the Kentucky Performing Arts Center Oct. 14-19, 2025, the world of Broadway and the circus collide to form an emotional show that proves the importance of everyone finding someone who understands them. Reader be warned, this show contains heavy themes of domestic and animal abuse.
The show opens with an old man, Jacob Jankowski (Robert Tully), reminiscing about his days working at a circus with two young circus owners. As he agrees to tell them about his past, the scene changes to show a young Jankowski (Zachary Keller) running away from home after learning that his parents died in a car accident, leaving him with nothing. The story follows Jankowski as he uses his veterinary knowledge to take care of the animals of the Benzini Brothers Circus, despite the fact that he never finished veterinary school.
In the process, he befriends the circus performers and falls for the ringmaster’s wife, Marlena (Helen Krushinski). The two grow closer together as they work to train a newly acquired circus act: an old, stubborn elephant named Rosie. Their affair soon catches the eye of Marlena’s volatile husband, Augustus (Conner Sullivan), forcing them to choose between what they’ve known before and the life they want for themselves.
Throughout the show, it becomes clear to the audience that Augustus is abusive toward Marlena, both physically and emotionally. He wants to control her and cannot fathom why she would prefer Jankowski over him. The answer is clear; Jankowski understands her. As a veterinarian, Jankowski shares Marlena’s love of animals and her desire to protect the circus animals from Augustus’s cruelty. While Augustus beats Rosie to try to get her to comply with his orders, Jankowski and Marlena treat her with kindness and let her come to them on her own terms.
However, despite all the kindness shown to Rosie, she still won’t cooperate with Jankowski and Marlena by the time the day of her first scheduled performance arrives. As Augustus stalls for time, the two work frantically backstage to get Rosie to listen, to no avail. It is then that Jankowski makes a breakthrough: Rosie only understands Polish.
Before this development, everyone but Jankowski and Marlena assumed Rosie to be unintelligent and stubborn. But once they realize how to communicate with her, she instantly cooperates with them.
This change in Rosie’s behavior is shown through the beautiful design of the animals. Before learning that Rosie was trained in Polish, the elephant was represented with parts of her body, such as just her face or just her leg. After people understand what she needs, she is represented as a complete elephant. The character design shows how one’s being cannot be seen in its entirety by someone who doesn’t understand them.
As Jankowski and Marlena’s relationship grows, they discover that they are happier together than they were before. It is later revealed that the couple were married for 50 years after a violent accident at the circus killed Augustus. However, after Marlena passes away, Jankowski finds himself in a nursing home. He is unhappy there, as he feels that they don’t understand his desire for freedom from the mundane. In the end, he decides to run away with the circus once more, back to the place that understands him best.
The songs were adequate, though nothing about them truly stood out. Though the songs left some to be desired, “Water for Elephants” makes up for it with wonderful choreography, talented performers and the atmosphere of truly being at the circus. The emotional story is filled with frequent breaks for the circus performers to dazzle the audience. The ease with which they flew through the air left the audience cheering and served as a fun counterweight to the emotionally charged show. The circus acts were also utilized as a storytelling method. While Marlena comforts her injured horse early on in the show, an aerial silks artist performs a mesmerizing routine to represent the untameable spirit of the horse, despite the hoof injury that left it unable to walk.
After laughing at circus antics, crying over emotional deaths and cheering for the underdog couple, the audience is sent home thinking about what it means to be happy and the necessity of finding someone who understands you to be happy. Tickets for “Water for Elephants” and other shows coming to the Kentucky Performing Arts Center can be purchased here.
