Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals

Review - Traces at the Union Square Theater

As I was in the process of writing this review, the producers of the new Off-Broadway production Traces announced that the show would be extending its run until January 2012. The show opened last week to some really strong reviews, so the extension was certainly no surprise. Traces was originally scheduled to play until October 9th, which means this extension will more than double the originally scheduled run for the show.

This is good news for you, dear reader, as it gives you what I hope will be ample time to head down to the Union Square Theater and catch this awe-inspiring demonstration of athleticism and showmanship. Traces was devised by that other circus group that operates out of Quebec, called 7 Fingers. (Boston readers may recall the show Psy, another 7 Fingers show, which recently played two well-received stints at the Paramount Theater.) And Traces amounts to just about the most enjoyable show currently playing New York, both in terms of artistry and sheer entertainment value. Well, the most enjoyable show you can actually get tickets to. (See The Book of Mormon. Or, well, if you could see it, that is...)

Traces is essentially a series of thoroughly impressive acrobatic acts, artfully combined with equal parts dance, multimedia, and art installation. (Watch this video for a preview.) Think Cirque du Soleil without the pretense. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Cirque. But it does seem that they've gotten a bit too big for their britches lately. The Cirque folks seem to be making each successive show bigger, splashier, and more visually impressive. And along the way they've disconnected their audiences from the people underneath the lycra, foam rubber, and Ben Nye.

Traces restores the intimacy to many of the same acts one might see at a Cirque show: the setting is comparatively small, the performers wear street clothes. And the acts themselves become all the more impressive in the process by revealing the human face and effort behind the astonishing physical feats.

For example, in Zarkana, the Cirque du Soleil show that's currently playing at Radio City Music Hall (Read my review), the first act ends with about a dozen or so performers manipulating Cyr wheels, which are essentially large rings that people stand inside and roll around the stage. (Click here to see a video. It's a lot more impressive than I'm making it sound.) On the cavernous stage of the Radio City Music Hall, the efforts of these admittedly fine performers were somewhat lost. But when you're watching one person do it up close, especially someone as skilled as Bradley Henderson, who performs the Cyr wheel segment in Traces, the effect is downright thrilling.

The same sense of immediacy benefits all of the acts, of which Traces is abundantly supplied: hand balancing, feats of strength, aerial acrobatics, banquine, and more. One of the most dazzling sequences involved Chinese yo-yos, which most of the cast participated in, but which features the astonishing skill of Xia Zhengqi. I've seen similar acts before, and Zhengqi was by far the most skillful and sure-handed performer I've ever witnessed at this feat. Simply unbelievable.

The show ends with a tumbling sequence involving an increasingly number of hoops piled atop one another, which the cast members proceed to jump through in feats of increasing difficulty. And there were actually a good number of mistakes, but somehow that added to the delicious tension as the sequence progressed. The previous errors made the sequence more unnerving as the moves got progressively more challenging. I can't help thinking that the mistakes are planned, or at least tolerated, for just that reason. And I have absolutely no problem with that.

One of the chief assets of Traces is its amiable and...well...I might as well admit it, good-looking cast. (The cast comprises six hunky males and one lithe female, all decidedly easy on the eyes.) The piece features various monologues and biographical speeches from the cast members, which add to the humanity and charm of the show as a whole. And in between the acrobatic acts, the show intersperses vibrant dance, a charming skateboard ballet, a humorous reality-show spoof, and some admittedly abstruse stage business regarding the show's central conceit. ("Traces" refers obliquely to something about what we leave behind when we're gone, and involves some vague apocalyptic references. Whatever.)

But the charm of Traces lies not in its mere suggestion of a narrative, but in its stunning physical feats. Do yourself a favor and watch the video above. I think it will convince you to grab a ticket if you're in the New York area. Hey, now you've got until January, so even if you're not in the New York area, you might want to plan a trip, or at least check the Traces Web site to see if the show is headed in your direction. I think you'll be really glad that you did.

Review - Cirque du Soleil's Zarkana at Radio City Music Hall

You may recall that the Tony Awards got booted out of the Radio City Music Hall this year and had to make do with the Beacon Theatre, which is about half the size. (Roughly 6,000 versus 3,000 seats.) This caused no end of consternation on the part of Broadway producers, some of whom had to settle for seats out in the hinterlands, and some of whom, so I'm told, couldn't get tickets at all. (Bear in mind that, these days, a single Broadway show can have 20 to 30 names above the title. It takes a village.)

Well, all those disappointed backers can blame Cirque du Soleil for their ignominious treatment. The folks at Cirque struck a deal with Radio City to develop one of their fancy-pants spectacles specifically for that fabled venue. The result was Zarkana, and if I were one of the slighted, I'd be kinda pissed. It's not that Zarkana is bad. It's just that, if you've seen any of Cirque's other shows, it pales in comparison.

Zarkana represents a return to Cirque du Soleil's roots after the disastrous critical reception for its most recent New York City outing, Banana Shpeel, which played the Beacon Theatre. (Some would call that ironic. They'd be wrong.) I didn't see Banana Shpeel, but by all accounts it was a failed attempt to create a more strictly theatrical show, and evoke the look and feel of vaudeville. The show had tremendous, and well-publicized, difficulty during its tryout period (insert Spider-Man reference here), and closed months early at a significant loss.

I'm a huge fan of Cirque du Soleil, having seen almost all of their shows either live (The Beatles: Love, KÀ, Mystère, O, Dralion, Nouvelle Experience, etc.) or on DVD (Alegria, Quidam, Varekai, La Nouba, Corteo, etc.). A few holiday seasons back, I sacrificed one of my precious New York City show slots to see Wintuk. I even made a rare foray into reality TV to watch "Fire Within," a show about a number of Cirque cast members during the development of Varakai. As a consequence, I've come to expect more and more from them over the years. I guess you could say I'm both their biggest fan and their harshest critic.

I will say that Cirque works marginally better at Radio City than it did at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, which is where Wintuk played. There's something about the playing area at the MSG theater that made the acrobatic acts look puny. The grand proscenium at Radio City was more accommodating to Cirque's brand of panoramic imagery.

One mistake that Cirque made with Wintuk that it repeats with Zarkana is having the vocalists sing English lyrics. This is clearly not in Cirque's best interest. It gives you a chance to notice that the words don't really mean anything, at least not in the larger context of the show. The foreign lyrics used in most of their shows are much easier to ignore, and therefore forgive. Perhaps the folks at Cirque figured that, since a good portion of the audience for Zarkana will be tourists, that English will in fact be a foreign language. Also, the male vocalist, one Garou, was essentially a gravelly Neil Diamond with a soul patch. (And there should be a law that you don't get to have a pretentious one-word name until you're actually famous.)

Zarkana features everything you've come to know and presumably love about other Cirque shows, including stunning visuals, a flimsy narrative conceit, and a general barrage of sight and sound. Although, I think here, the creative staff may have gone a bit overboard in their quest to create something new. The abundant digital projections featured a host of genuinely disturbing images, including slithering snakes, enormous floating eyeballs, and a six-armed talking mutant baby who says, "Welcome to my funeral."

'Kay.

What's missing in Zarkana is the "wow" factor that so many of Cirque's other shows feature in abundance. The actual acts, around which most Cirque shows are structured, are for this show almost entirely ordinary. Granted, I've seen seen almost every Cirque show, and it would be sort of hard to "wow" me at this point, but they've certainly managed to impress me almost continually over the years.

There are a few elements in Zarkana that were somewhat new to me, including a visually arresting act featuring young men juggling what appear to be large, strangely weighted flags. There was something about how these flags filled the full height and width of the stage that I found fascinating. And the top of the second act features something I've not encountered before: a woman creating sand art on a lighted screen while the images are projected over her head. Some of the images were a bit too impressionistic to impress an antsy crowd of children (and this ADHD adult), but there are some really stunning images that she is able to create on the fly.

But, overall, too many of the acts here are decidedly pedestrian, more of the Barnum and Bailey variety than what you'd typically expect from Cirque. Most are rather short, and there are many of them in succession, as though the creators are going for sheer quantity to make up for a lack of big, impressive set pieces. There are jugglers, trapeze artists, balancing acts, etc. The cast features about 75 people in total. But what's amazing is that there could be so many people on stage to so little effect. The final acrobatic act, featuring 16 tumblers moving to some rather sharp and visually interesting choreography, is quite impressive. But in another Cirque show, this would probably have been the one act that you forgot amid the parade of wonder. Typically, you can count on Cirque at least for eye candy, but that is also sadly lacking in Zarkana. The group of tightrope walkers may be the most out-of-shape acrobats I've ever seen.

Zarkana runs at the Radio City Music Hall through October 8th, followed by stops in Madrid and Moscow. If you're jonesing for a Cirque fix and can't get to Vegas or Orlando or Los Angeles or Tokyo, or see one of the touring shows, it's certainly worth a trip. But if you've experienced any of their best shows -- including my personal favorite, KÀ -- you might be disappointed. I know I was.

KÀ: The Best Cirque Ever

The highlight of my recent Vegas trip was Cirque du Soleil's spectacular show at the MGM Grand, KÀ. I've seen nearly every show that Cirque has put on, and this is easily the most visually stunning, the most acrobatically impressive, the most exhilarating Cirque show that I've yet experienced. And, yes, I saw O, but frankly I wasn't impressed. I found that the sheer size of the production dwarfed the physical feats on display.

With KÀ, it's not really the size of the show that's remarkable, although it is without question a literally massive undertaking. KÀ is also the most integrated, cohesive, unified of all Cirque's shows. In other words, this is the first Cirque show in which the story actually makes sense.

Granted, it's not the most involved of plots: it basically involves two siblings in an imperial Asian family who become separated and struggle to reunite, finding love and adventure along the way. Yeah, it's not going to win any prizes for complexity or nuance. But the numerous acrobatic performances actually fit into the plot, albeit sometimes in a tangential way. Most Cirque shows have themes and settings, but not so much as plot.

And the set. Oh, my sainted aunt, the set. I'm not one to walk out whistling the scenery but the sheer physical production is simply breathtaking. The theater for KÀ is truly immense, and the set has more hydraulics than Starlight Express, and yet the physical elements don't overshadow the proceedings, but rather enhance them. 

And the acrobatic acts themselves are simply astonishing. A few months back, I was poking around on YouTube, and I found a bunch of clips from KÀ (all of them apparently legal, taken from various online promos and television appearances). Watching these clips really made me want to see the show, and I'm glad that I rearranged my Vegas trip in such a way that I would get to see it. Watching the acts live had me cringing, flinching, clenching, and above all marveling at the imagination involved in dreaming up such acrobatic feats, and the skill involved in executing them.

So, if you're ever in Vegas, put KÀ at the top of your list. Of the six Cirque du Soleil shows currently playing in that city (the others are Mystère, The Beatles: Love, Criss Angel Believe, Zumanity, and O), it is, for my money, the most artistically satisfying.

Love: Cirque du Soleil Meets the Beatles

As I've said recently, whenever I'm in Vegas, I like to take in a Cirque du Soleil show, and this time I was fortunate to see two: The Beatles: Love and KÀ. Look for my review of the latter sometime soon. (In brief: frickin' amazing.)

The Beatles: Love represents the first co-branded Cirque show. (But not the last: cf. Criss Angel Believe.) Previous CdS shows have been all Cirque, all the time. Now they seem to be branching out and riding the marketing coattails of other established brands. I see nothing wrong with that, necessarily, as long as the shows are good.

And Love is good. Very good, in fact. The show embodies an evolutionary impulse on the part of the Cirque creators, an attempt to craft shows with more cohesive narrative structures. (As I'll relate in my review of KÀ, that show reflects the same imperative.) Love is more of a dance show, very loosely telling the tale of The Beatles, with a few acrobatic acts thrown in. Previous Cirque shows have been more act-heavy with dance transitions. Imagine Movin' Out with better songs, more elegant design, and a somewhat less literal narrative, and you essentially have Love.

The Beatles: Love is primarily a stunning visual achievement. The overarching look of the show is simply exquisite, from the diaphanous costumes to the clever animated projections. The physical acts themselves were less impressive than those in your typical Cirque show, but ultimately I didn't mind. There were still a number of acrobatic sequences that brought a very broad, satisfied smile to my face, including a stunning bit with four guys on in-line skates navigating a double half-pipe.

For a while, as I sat watching the show, I felt disappointed that there weren't any performances that made my jaw drop, as happens for me with most Cirque shows. But then I thought, why should the folks at Cirque simply keep trying to make things more impressive, more astonishing, more...American? Because isn't that a lot of what American culture is about? Making things bigger, longer, higher, faster, more elaborate, more expensive, more, more, more. Isn't that what essentially gave us Donald Trump? And isn't that what brought about our current economic mess?

Well, I seem to have strayed from my thesis a bit, but suffice to say, I fully support the apparent effort on the part of Cirque du Soleil to expand beyond the boundaries of their past shows. Especially when it results is something as gorgeous and satisfying as The Beatles: Love.