Water for Elephants

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Grown adults come out of this one surprised to be wiping their eyes, which is not what anybody expects from a show with aerialists in it. A Depression-era circus, a runaway veterinary student, and a love story told under canvas that smells of sawdust and something more dangerous. Sara Gruen's novel had a long life in book clubs before Broadway got to it, and the staging is why people talk about the production rather than the plot: real circus arts, bodies in the air, puppetry conjuring an entire menagerie out of almost nothing while you watch it happen. It is a big old-fashioned romance done in a way theater has not quite managed before. The touring production plays Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa, off the 405 near South Coast Plaza, in November. Bring somebody who still cries at the good ones and does not apologize for it.