Hello,
It's amazing how hard it is to light a simple bulb sometimes isnt it? This shows us just how much more complicated things are than they look at first sometimes.
Another idea would be to connect an inductor in series with the caps between bulb and caps. It may work with just the inductor too if it is sized right. Have to pay attention to kick back when the circuit is turned off too however as inductors can generate high voltage when disconnected from a circuit while current is still flowing through them. You could probably get away with an inductor rated for the nominal current flow.
Alternately, you could design a transistor delay circuit that turns the bulb on after the voltage on the caps has built up to near max.
Best: phase the dang thing out and use LED's instead