Cirque de Soleil

“OVO” – Guide and Founder – Guy Laliberté. Artistic Guide – Gilles Ste-Croix. Writer, Director and Choreographer – Deborah Colker. Costume Design by Liz Vandal. Set Design by Designer Gringo Cardia. Musical Composition and Direction by Berna Ceppas. Lighting Design by Éric Champoux. Presented by Cirque de Soleil at Agganis Arena, 925 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA. Run has ended.

By Shelley A. Sackett

“How did they do that?” exclaimed my companion with all the amazement and awe of a seven-year-old as a cluster of red-clad creatures slid down poles horizontally and screeched to a halt inches above the floor.

Whether seven or seventy-seven, the artistic magic and athletic showmanship of a Cirque de Soleil performance never gets stale.

This year’s show, OVO (Portuguese for “egg”), takes us on a magical mystery tour into the secret world of insects, where crickets, ladybugs, and spiders live inside a colorful and chaotic world. Crickets chirp nonstop. The music is whimsical, and the sets are as fabulous and creative as the costumes. There are trampolines, climbing walls, and enormous monitors that screen vibrant close-ups of nature and psychedelia.

And then there are the amazing acrobatic acts, which stretch the imagination and defy the human body’s normal physical limitations.

OVO‘s creator and director, Deborah Colker, took inspiration from the world of insects. The idea for OVO was not to be about the acts, dancing, or insects but about movement. The movement of life permeates the entire show, with creatures flying, leaping, bounding, and crawling.

All Cirque de Soleil shows have underlying stories. OVO takes place in the teeming, creepy crawling world of the insect world, where critters eat, play, flirt, squabble, and horse around. The nonstop action and vitality are a riotous world of energy, emotion, and chatter.

A mysterious, quirky insect arrives in this microcosm carrying a mysterious egg. The community gathers around it, curious and a little intimidated. A ladybug catches the newcomer’s eye, and he quickly takes his eye off the egg as he pursues his new love.

Eventually, the mystery of the egg and its symbolic representation of the cycles of life, death, and rebirth are revealed.

The meat of the evening, however, is in the acrobatic performances. A performer high above the stage emerges from a cocoon as a butterfly and flies away. Acrobat “crickets” bounce between a trampoline and a rock wall in frenetic leaps and bounds. A seemingly jointless spider weaves a mysterious web.

There are even nightclub-esque singing numbers, on-stage live musicians, and audience participation numbers. These are more annoying and distracting than entertaining for the true Cirque fan and feel like additions meant to pad the show and run out the clock. The techno beat starts to grate, and the ladybug shtick gets very old very quickly. Even the kids in the audience grew fidgety, especially in Act II.

This reviewer would have preferred a shorter, intermission-less show with more meat and less filler.

Although not the most thrilling or satisfying Cirque de Soleil, OVO’s originality, grace, and world-class international talent is nonetheless as astonishing as always. If you can’t be at the Olympics, this might just be the next best thing.

Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Twas the Night Before…’ at the Boch Center

by Shelley A. Sackett

‘Twas the Night Before…, Cirque de Soleil’s first Christmas show, delivered a sunny holiday respite from the blinding rain last Wednesday night. But the 85-minute intermission-less show was more than just shelter from the storm — it was a family-friendly retelling of the familiar Christmas classic with all the thrill, glitz, and mind-boggling contortions that have become Cirque de Soleil trademarks.

The lighting, set design and costumes were nothing to sneeze at, either.

Inspired by Clement Clarke Moore‘s poem, “A Visit From St. Nicolas,” the updated Cirque version tells the story of teenaged Isabella (Alicia Beaudoin) and her journey from world weary self-absorbed indifference to renewed wide-eyed reverence and appreciation for the magic that is the Christmas spirit.

The show opens on Christmas Eve, and Isabella and her father (Benjamin Thomas Courtney) are set to read “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” as they do every year. Only this year, Isabella feels she is too cool for such an old fashioned and boring tradition. She is simply too trendy for her father and his outdated ways.

Alicia Beaudoin and Benjamin Thomas Courtenay

Her dad is frustrated that his once close relationship with his daughter has been disrupted by smart phones and social media. He hopes reading the poem together will rekindle Isabella’s passion for Christmas. He tries everything, but not even the gift of a bow-adorned bicycle can snap her out of her Scrooge-like mood.

Suddenly, like magic, the poem comes to life. A snowstorm comes out of nowhere, , separating Isabella and her father and sending them on a fantastic journey full of — you guessed it — circus performers.

And this is where the show really takes off.

Isabella wanders through this wonderland, and we walk in her shadow through an enchanted wonderland of tinsel arches (12,200 linear feet of garland) and piles of glistening snow (5,000 cubic feet, or five large dump trucks’ worth). Each change of hue in the lighting creates a new mood and dream-like charm, signaling a new act that is inspired by separate lines from the poem.

In the Land of the Poem, Isabella encounters the Straps Duo, an aerial act performed 20 feet in the air. Jolly the Juggler is a colorful and comedic character who befriends her and becomes her guide. The Acrobatic Table Act features naughty children who make a ruckus while waiting for Santa to arrive. Their charming striped pajama costumes with animal ear hoodies evoke children’s cake toppers come to life.

There is the saucy and spoiled starlet, Ava, who performs remarkable feats on a gilded luggage rack in a sequined outfit that makes her look like the gift she thinks she is. Two disco-clad green-haired roller skaters reach speeds up to 30 mph on a platform just six feet in diameter. Most remarkably, an artist is suspended by her hair, performing 100 turns at a top speed of seven turns per second. Clad in a silver sequined costume and palming globe lights, she is breathtaking, part spritely ballerina, part sexy Tinkerbelle.

There is a snowball fight that overflows into the audience, disco dancers, performers in the aisles and other tricks guaranteed to thrill the youngsters and keep them engaged. In short, it is good old-fashioned family entertainment with something for everyone.

Eventually, Isabella and her father reunite, and together they read aloud the familiar lines that introduce Santa’s reindeer — and the Cirque Hoop Divers, acrobats dressed in charming and effective gold lamé. They look like globs of human mercury as they sail through hoops as high as 10 feet and as small in diameter as 18 inches.

Although the recorded soundtrack is an energetic mixture of original and traditional Christmas, it is way too loud to enjoy. (I wish I had had earplugs. It was that loud). The costumes are, as always, superb and the makeup and hair departments bring life to the show’s colorful characters.

There would be no Cirque de Soleil without the remarkable cadre of Cirque performers who exact the super-human from their human bodies, and ‘Twas is no exception. “How do they do that?” my friend and I kept asking each other, knowing full well that for our earth bound selves, these questions were merely rhetorical.

‘Twas the Night Before…’ – Conceived and Directed by James Hadley. Production by Cirque de Soleil at Boch Center Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont St., Boston through December 11.For more info and tickets, go to: https://www.cirquedusoleil.com/twas-the-night-before

InSights

A Blog by Shelley A. Sackett

Cirque de Soleil Dives into the Insect World in the Colorful “OVO”

Cirque de Soleil’s ‘Twas the Night Before…’ Is True Family Holiday Fare