CIRCUS CANNONBALL

Varga's answer to a bored housewife's dilemma should satisfy traditionalists despite the unusual job her heroine ends up with. Though Mrs. Morelli travels with the circus she's understandably restless: while her husband performs daily (""and twice on Saturday"") as a human cannonball, her son rides a motorcycle on the high wire, and ""even"" her daughter Lola, a magician's assistant, is daily sawed in half, Mrs. Morelli's greatest adventure is making spaghetti sauce. After trying out a number of unexciting odd jobs around the circus she's about ready to go back to the kitchen--but when her husband's assistant quits, Mrs. Morelli pinch-hits, and she creates such a spectacle by mixing hot pepperoni seeds (her secret spaghetti ingredient) with the cannon powders that she gets to keep the job and her happy home too. Demonstrating, it seems, that a woman's place is behind her husband whether she's feeding him from the kitchen or fueling his career. And Varga's predominately pink domestic and circus scenes are as conventional as her message.