I apologize for my extended absence from the blogosphere. Holidays and whatnot. I haven't even had time to post reviews of the remaining two shows I saw on my recent NYC trip.
Here's the first: Cirque du Soleil's Wintuk (because it's not Cirque du Soleil if it doesn't have a pretentious foreign-sounding name) at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden. The show recently closed, being holiday-themed and all, but it will no doubt make another lucrative appearance in future seasons.
I must say, the WaMu seems a much more suitable venue for a Cirque du Soleil show than for Alan Menken's and Lynn Ahrens's A Christmas Carol, the last thing I saw at this enormous, cold, unappealing venue. A Christmas Carol really got lost in the cavernous 5,600-seat auditorium. (Point of comparison, Radio City Music Hall has about 5,900 seats) The WaMu is more a wedge-shaped stadium than a true theater, and certainly more fitting as a location for an affected Québécois circus than an overproduced musical.
As for Wintuk, I wasn't sure what to expect going in. Cirque du Soleil (hereafter: CdS) has long been a guilty pleasure of mine: I know it's precious and twee, but I just love the look and feel of the shows, and the acts almost always blow me away. I've seen Nouvelle Experience, Mystere, and O in Las Vegas, and Dralion when it stopped in Boston few years back. I also have the DVDs for Saltimbanco, Quidam, Allegria, Varekai, and La Nouba. I even watched the "The Fire Within" on Bravo a few seasons back, a rare foray for me into reality TV.
Wintuk represents a departure for CdS in many ways: It's smaller in scale than most of their other shows. And people actually speak and sing in English, which doesn't work much in the show's favor: it lets you hear exactly how puerile the lyrics are. One song repeats the phrase "dogs will be dogs" ad nauseum. Not exactly a trenchant observation.
The central premise of the show is the quest for a young boy to see
snow, which is certainly a more quotidian theme than those of other CdS
shows. Act one begins with the boy in an urban, winter landscape, versus the typical otherworldly CdS settings. The acrobatic acts are smaller and more intimate, making often clever use of the urban setting, with performances emerging directly from inhabitants of the city environment: construction workers, cops and robbers, skateboarders, etc. Wintuk represents the other end of the spectrum from O, the over-hyped and overrated CdS fixture at the Bellagio.
The irony of Cirque du Soleil for me is that, although it's impressive that they try to set some context, tell a story, and create another world, I always find myself just waiting for the next act. Australian comedian Eddie Perfect says it quite succinctly in the intro to his song that elegantly skewers CdS: "Do you know that if you guys really follow the narrative [of a Cirque du Soleil show], if you really study the the deeply embedded, cultural symbolic signposts, the whole thing doesn't mean shit? Yeah, it's magic: the illusion of content...We know it's a circus, we know you do tricks, just do some fucking tricks."
So, the CdS paradox is that what distinguishes them as a circus and as entertainment is how they build a larger story around the acrobatics, but the stories themselves are rarely distinguished. Sometimes the storyline is opaque as hell (Varekai), and sometimes it's so groan-inducing-ly pretentious that you wind up wishing it were opaque (Allegria: An Enchanting Fable, Journey of Man).
The main problem with Wintuk is that it fails to deliver on the Cirque du Soleil promise of spectacular physical performances. Act 1 has some juggling, a contortionist, some balancing and bike tricks, but nothing new or unusual, at least for the seasoned CdS fan. At least in Act 2 we get some real acrobats: a bit of tumbling, some hoola hoops, and a rather inscrutable act with those inflatable exercise balls. Finally at the end of the show there's a signature CdS acrobatic routine, but it's nothing CdS fans haven't seen before, and it's a bit of an anticlimax.
What's more, Act 2 represents an irritating change of venue. This Eskimo priestess, or some such, shows up to transport the snow-seeking boy to a North-Pole-type place, and here's where CdS lays on the pretense fast and thick. At one point, the show employs these enormous, puppet-like, ponderously slow-moving snow beasts, who do very little except emerge, take up stage time, then disappear. Woo hoo.
The Eskimo priestess acts as an emcee for the whiny, unappreciative, young protagonist. She shows him the wonders of her people, in the form of the various acts and performers, and the boy just says, "This is all great, but where's the snow?" Finally, at the
end of the show, the annoying kid gets his snow. In fact, we all do, care of
strategically placed confetti cannons throughout the auditorium, which I have to admit was pretty impressive to witness.
Wintuk isn't a bad show, it just makes the mistake of scaling Cirque du Soleil down, and not including anything new in terms of the circus acts themselves. This places the flaws and pretense of CdS in dramatic, unflattering relief. In a way, Wintuk is charming and creative as only CdS can do. On the other hand, it's underwhelming in comparison with other CdS shows. If you haven't seen CdS before, you'll likely be impressed, if not blown away. If you have, well, Wintuk will certainly do until you can get a chance to see a fully fledged CdS show, rather than this half-pint imitation. (With apologies to Lorenz Hart)
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