Cirque du Soleil performs "Varekai" in New York City
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Here's the story line (which seems translated, sometimes poetically, sometimes whimsically, from the French): "Deep within a forest, at the summit of a volcano, exists an extraordinary world — a world where something else is possible.A world called Varekai.' From the sky falls a solitary young man, and the story of Varekai' begins. Parachuted into the shadows of a magical forest, a kaleidoscopic world populated by fantastical creatures, this young man sets off on an adventure both absurd and extraordinary. On this day at the edge of time, in this place of all possibilities, begins an inspired incantation to life rediscovered."
The show comes to life, slowly, gradually, like a jungle dawn. A dozen creatures (members of the company, costumed by renowned Japanese artist Eiko Ishioka) prance or creep across the verdant stage. (The scenic designer is Stphane Roy.) A half-dozen others clamber halfway up the tall bamboo shoots. Somnambulist images take shape, suggesting the paintings of Magritte and Bosch, the stately stagescapes of Robert Wilson. This is the circus, not of your memory but of your artistic bachelor uncle's dreams.
In this Rousseau reverie are a myriad of forest denizens, animal, vegetable and that one human. Five creatures seem an amalgam of species: they walk on stilt-stalks. Another keeps time with an invisible paddleball. A beige bird walks carefully, as if hunters might capture and crate it at any moment. And then the boy appears, wrapped or rapt in a suspended net, a bas-relief painting against the living mural of the forest's residents. This is a place of illusions, false perspectives, trap doors; performers execute their dazzling routines, then disappear into holes that suddenly open on the stage floor.
As I said, it's a circus at heart — with stunts that suspend all laws of geometry, physics and credulity. Who dreams up these murderously tough muscle ballets? For example, a two-man routine in the first act: I'll lie on my back and stick my feet up. You jump up onto my feet and, using them as a platform, do 32 somersaults — and landing on your feet, and mine, each time. The "water meteor" trio that follows has three Chinese boys (none older than 13, and all looking years younger) twirling large yoyos, sort of, on a kind of jump rope; for the climax, one boy holds the other two while the degree of difficulty accelerates to the googol power. (Then they vanish into holes.)
I say, "Send in the clowns," and you ask to be excused. But thin, sad-faced Claudio Carniero (from Brazil) has an easy gift for playing the incompetent impresario, and his assistant, pudgy blond Mooky Cornish from Canada, makes for a fine foil and out-smarter. In the first act Carniero drags a spectator into a ramshackle magic routine and makes him disappear, never quite managing to hide him behind the cheap curtain. (At the end of the routine, Cornish tries diving down one of the stage holes but gets stuck.) In Act II he is a torch singer, lip-synching the Jacques Brel ballad "Ne me quitte pas" while trying to stay in the range of a very slippery spotlight. His ruses become more elaborate, more desperate, crescendoing to a lovely capper: that the spotlight has been controlled, "Duck Amuck"-style, by Mooky. An interlude of beautifully calibrated silliness.
I've left out the most gorgeous, soaring pieces of "Varekai." Some things have to be experienced, and if poetry is what's lost in translation, Cirque is what beggars description. Another warning: In this synopsis, I may have got a few of the details wrong. Truth is, at a Cirque performance I sometimes forget to take notes. Under the blue and yellow tent I misplace my pencil and my critical scruples. For two hours I become a kid, gaping up at miracles of physical strength and elasticity, splendors of stagecraft. I envy the young children who see "Varekai." Like "the Lion King" on Broadway and "Finding Nemo" in the plexes, it is the perfect introduction to the empyrean of popular art — the wisest gift a parent could bestow.
MY NORTH AMERICAN IDOLS
The tone of much critical discourse in matters of popular culture is indulgent derision. TV reviewers join the rest of America in watching the weekly trudge of reality TV contestants — the idiot daredevils, quavering singers, annoying tykes, the people who are shocked that their neighbor has made a botch of renovating their rec room — and profess to find some nugget of entertainment truth beyond the ken of professional writers and actors. (Cirque had its own fling into docudrama, a Bravo series, "The Fire Within," that followed several Cirque hopefuls through the arduous audition process. Just say it wasn't the company's finest half-hour.)
I can't summon even an awful fascination for these adventures in condescension. I watch a TV show or movie, go to a show, listen to music, to discover something smarter, funnier, more sublime than I could imagine creating. Stupid, boring, embarrassing: those I can do on my own. Call me old-fashioned, but I want what Jean Cocteau demanded of a work of art. Astonish me!
Cirque du Soleil does just that, year after year, in every new show. Some more than others: none of Cirque's tent spectacles matches "Mystre" and "O," the permanent productions at the Treasure Island and Bellagio resorts in Las Vegas. I wrote it two years ago, and I still believe it: those are the two great theatrical experiences of the past decade. (And on Aug. 14th, a new show, the sexy "Zumanity," will open at Vegas' New York New York hotel.) But if "Varekai" is dwarfed by the Vegas epiphanies, it towers over most films, Broadway shows and even the finals of "American Idol." It has an otherworldly grace and magnificence that, after two viewings, still astonishes me.
Skeptical New Yorkers, you have until July 6 to prove me wrong. Chicago (July 17 to Aug. 17), Los Angeles (Sept. 12 to Oct. 5) and Pomona (Dec. 4 to 28), you're next. Take the Cirque challenge, wherever. I warrant that any suspicions you bring to the tent will dissolve in the radiance. And when someone asks you to name all the things wrong with "Varekai," you'll be as quiet as a ... mime.