Cormac Fitzgerald Rockin' the Suburbs

In this series, journalist and spoken word artist Cormac Fitzgerald travels to a different town or suburb each week to cover the gigs and cultural experiences you rarely see covered by Irish media outlets. 

This week’s subject: A trip to the circus in the last week of summer. 

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AS I WATCHED Tom and Jamie Duffy spin, swing and jump through the air on the Wheel of Death in the centre of the circus ring, I was struck once again by how something so wondrous to so many people can become the most normal thing in the world when you have been doing it your whole life. 

It was the end of the first night in Clontarf for Tom Duffy’s Circus. I and the rest of the 2-300 strong audience – many of them children – had just been treated to two hours of pure, joyous spectacle. 

Across the packed schedule were dancers and acrobats, jugglers and motorcycle riders, pounding music and bright lights, high wire trapeze artists, aerial rope performers, a really funny clown who made delightful fools of the audience, a strongman bending metal poles and literally getting run over by a jeep, and lots more. 

It had been many years since I had gone to the circus, and I was very impressed with the level of talent, showmanship, and sheer physical artistry that was on display.  

But now the final act had come.

The huge steel contraption with two circular chambers on either side hung over the ring, the Duffys started to spin it around and hopped on.

Over the next 10 or so minutes, they spun the wheel between themselves, landing and hoisting themselves up onto the contraption as it went round and round at high speed.

Jamie and Tom performing the act at an earlier show. Tom Duffy's Circus Tom Duffy's Circus

The wheel rotated, powered only by the two brothers’ momentum and balance. They flew through the air unsupported, only to land on top of the wheel just as it was spinning to the other side. It was crazy to watch. One mis-timed move could have spelled disaster. 

As the act finished off, Jamie got himself ready and did a somersault on the outside of the wheel as it spun. Apparently he is one of the only people in the world who can do this.

The crowd went wild. 

After a final song and dance number where all the performers emerged onstage, the crowd gave a final round of applause and started to file out.

The Duffy brothers and the rest of the performers began to clean up and wind down the big top for the evening, sweeping the aisles for popcorn and shutting off the lights.

The show was over.

Just another day at the office for the sixth generation circus family.

The strongman about to get crushed.

It’s all in the family

A few hours earlier, I walked from the bright evening into the huge blue and red big top tent that had recently been set up at the corner of the Alfie Byrne Road in Clontarf. 

The second I entered the space, with the bright show lights, pictures of past performers and shows, the ticket booth and the big ring with all the ropes and pulleys and contraptions, I was transported to that circus world with all its connotations of the past and of greasepaint, off-kilter spectacle, clowning and the bizarre carnival atmosphere; the feeling of normal reality being suspended in this space, where anything could happen.

I sat down to talk with Tom and Jamie, their father David, and Tom’s wife Candice before the show, and tried to express this sense of immediate wonder that I felt.

“I mean it is normal for us because we’ve all been born into it,” David Duffy (64), the patriarch of the family told me.

“I’m the fifth generation. The lads are sixth. And my granddaughter [Tom and Candice's daughter Charlotte] now who’s 18 months old is the seventh.”

There are centuries of circus in the Duffy family line. It all started in the 1800s, and the skills and knowledge have been passed down through the generations, with various Duffys forming various circuses over the decades.

Tom Duffy’s Circus came into being in the early 1980s when David’s father, Tom (who died in 2022), split from his brothers and formed his own outfit. With the exception of the Covid years, it has been on the road ever since, and is the only Duffy circus left standing.

“I still feel that wonder. They all laugh at me, but I still feel it,” said Candice Duffy, who wasn’t born into the circus and so can still see it from an outsider’s perspective.

Originally from north Wales, she has been working in circuses for 16 years.

“I first went to a small village green circus that had spotted ponies and girls dressed in sequins doing ballet and acrobatics and it was just like this microcosm of everything I’ve found joy in I suppose,” she said.

They’ve a lot more cynical worldview on it but for me it’s never lost it’s magic. 

“We were both born into it,” Tom Duffy (33) told me.

“We were on the road all the time, nine months of the year. Apart from three months that are closed for winter.”

The family had an arrangement with the Department of Education where teachers would privately tutor the boys while they were on the road. They attended normal school when the family – including the boys’ mother Stephanie – retreated to their base in Bohermeen, outside Navan, Co Meath, for the first three months of the year to rest and plan for the year ahead.

“Dad stayed in school the whole time growing up and would only go back to the circus during the summer holidays,” said Jamie (30).

So dad made the decision at the time, and of course the system was better, that we would never be off the show, which has helped us really learn.

And learn they did. The boys started doing acts from a young age. The same way a typical child might learn to kick a football or ride a bike, they were immersed in a world of juggling, performance and acrobatics. Soon, they were performing multiple acts in the ring.

The brothers perform the Wheel of Death.

This year, they are only performing the Wheel of Death, which they have been doing for the past 13 years. But for the lads, it’s no big thing. The hardest part these days is keeping the show on the road.

“We’re performers and we run all the lighting and the sound and all the technical parts of the show. It’s all me and Jamie,” said Tom.

“Plus being inside the ring performing [what used to be] three or four acts as well. It’s tiring. It’s hard work, but it’s all we’ve ever really known.”

Do they miss performing lots of acts?

“We’re getting old now. I can feel it in my knees,” said Tom. 

I laugh and say they’re not that old yet, but Jamie sets me right:

“When you’ve been in the ring since five or six it gets hard. We’ve got 25 years of this behind us!”

Keeping the show on the road 

The size of the operation is staggering: 25 trucks complete with caravans and stuffed full of all the props and fixtures, 40 workers, and roughly 40 locations a year (it used to be 90 before Covid). There are also costumes, lighting, sound, smoke machines and everything else to think about.

Tom Duffy’s Circus does about 200 shows a year during their season, not including a three-week Christmas circus in Tallaght. Except for a week or two here and there throughout the year, the family said they are always working.

Some wonderful foot juggling on a motorcycle from the Gauchos.

For decades David was the face of the circus and the ringmaster, directing proceedings through the show. He suffered a stroke early this year and has taken a back seat since, buth is still very much involved in the running the business. 

Candice has taken over ringmistress duties, as well as lots of the behind-the-scenes work, while the two brothers manage lighting, set up and the logistics of the whole operation.

No one does just one job in the circus and this goes for the rest of the staff, too, who work mostly on yearly contracts – they are the acrobats and trapeze artists, the cleaners and popcorn sellers. The woman selling you a drink at the interval might be the person you just saw doing death-defying acrobatics a few minutes earlier.

It is a full-on, gruelling job for everyone involved, who must have dedicated their whole lives to perfecting their acts. It is not an easy life to do thing you love. The costs and the effort are huge, and recently the Duffys have been feeling close to the edge.

On the night I was there, the huge big top seemed a bit over half full, but Candice told me this was probably a first night bump. In general, the family are worried about declining tickets sales in recent years, after a significant post-Covid surge in attendance.

I ask if phones and the constant availability of cheap distracting entertainment has anything to do with it, but the Duffys put the blame squarely on the cost-of-living crisis.

“What has had the biggest effects on us is the economy at the moment,” said David Duffy.

“People haven’t got that much spare cash. The price of fuel, insurance, local authorities not giving us accessible grounds. 

“We’re not in a bubble, we’re not isolated from what’s going on around us, as we aren’t isolated from the same problems as everybody else with the economy.

Because there’s only so much that we can absorb and put on to our ticket prices because people are struggling at the moment and entertainment is a luxury, it’s not a necessity.

The show must go on

But still the show goes on, night after night after night. 

A full summer of touring across rural Ireland behind them, the circus is in Clontarf until Sunday 6 September. Then it’s off to Tyrrelstown, then to the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre, and so on.

Once the show started, I forgot all about the logistics and got lost in the spectacle of it all. From the smiles, to the athletics and showmanship, from Maycon the Brazilian clown’s antics, to the highwire acrobats to the Duffys’ ridiculous Wheel of Death routine, I didn’t get a sense of jadedness from the performers in the ring.

As David Duffy put it:

“When the public comes to see us, our whole thing is for them to forget about their problems, so there’s no point us telling them our woes.”

But it must be hard to do the same show day in day out, then to pack up an entire convoy and move onto the next town, set up and do it all over again, while worried about attendance and what will happen in the future.

As Tom Duffy said, though, it’s all they know – the show must go on. 

As they spun through the air for their finale, Tom and Jamie were probably already thinking about shutting the place down for the night, their highly trained bodies on automatic mode after all the years of perfecting the act.

But for Candice Duffy, the magic is definitely still there:

“I’m so passionate about making circus so accessible and community engagement because it is often a child’s first experience of live entertainment and culture and art,” she said.

“And it’s an affordable and accessible way. Coming from a working class background that is important to me.

“There’s no etiquette here like there is in the theatre or the opera… and it’s really accessible for multi-generations to come and have a great time.

It was always magic to me. I love the circus and that’s why I think I am good at my job.