Cirque du Romance Gooble
Parking: $18
Last night, Plotnik and Ducknik went to the Press Opening of the new Cirque du Soleil 'Corteo.' For a concert, their fantastic seats would have been the best in the house, directly in back of the Cirque du Flash sound console, where the sound man sits. You hear what he hears, and he knows what he's doing, so you hear the show the way it's supposed to sound.
Unfortunately, the music in every Cirque du Soleil is fingernails-on-blackboard annoying. It never fails. It's a kind of hybrid faux-European-Quebecois blend, with lyrics using made up combinations of French, Spanish and Italian so it all comes out sounding like Romance Gooble. If you closed your eyes you'd think you were in a Montreal elevator, with dwarves.
Oh yeah, the dwarves. Whooooooo-o-o. Plot and Duck are still shivering about the segment where two dwarves play Romeo and Juliet like Moe and Curly, with Curly in drag. Canadians must find something humorous in dwarf ridicule, but Plot, Duck, and several thousand other San Franciscans sat on their hands, stunned.
Did we mention $18 to park?
Still, Cirque du Soleil is never about the music, nor the 'plot,' but about the circus performers themselves.
Plotnik went with The Great Dancenik recently to see the fabulous Cirque Eloize, more rewarding in nearly every way than 'Corteo,' but the jugglers in Eloize could not come close to the four miracle workers at work on the Corteo stage. Holy Macaroni! The eyes could not follow their speed, plus they were acrobats, so they juggled dozens of laser-lit bowling pins while climbing all over each other's bodies.
And the bouncing beds, which were actually trampolines. And the lady who tightrope walked upwards on a 45 degree angle. The horses -- the mare in high, red heels. Huzzah! Hurrah! More!
No, less. In the end, the clown rides a bicycle in, uh, heaven, we think, and it takes him quite awhile. 'Corteo' is a very long show, and the second half of Act II is a disaster, with one of the most unclimactic finishes since Bush 'beat' Gore.
Here's the way it is: if you like Andrew Lloyd Weber, you're likely to love 'Corteo.' It has flash, sound, superb production values, and quite a few fabulous performers. It is not intimate, but it is not supposed to be. In Plotnik's own opinion, Cirque du Soleil was at its magnificent best when it was young and new, and didn't keep trying to top itself each year. Even Weber found that out: There is only one 'Cats.' Keep trying, and you get Dogs.
Oh, did we mention $18 to park?
posted by DAK @ 11:32 AM
3 Comments:
great photo and a terrific review
here, thanks from the mushnik
I think you would have liked James Thierry's Bright Abyss at BAM this weekend. There were only 5 in the troupe and a couple of them were my god 50ish, the props shabby, the costumes tattered. Just when I started to get bored with the mime (granted it's very good mime, but enough), the music ramped up and they took off in the air. Theatre more than circus, plus a wind machine and lots of parachute silk. No dialog, no acts, no overt story. But it all built to a whopping finale that made me feel like I'd conquered the world.
Dancenik
good god, that isn't a sound board, it's a space machine.
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