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written and directed by Deborah Colker

Cirque du Soleil, Grand Chapiteau, Cherry & Commissioners Street, Toronto

September 3-November 8, 2009

“An Almost Perfect Egg”

Cirque du Soleil’s latest show “OVO” has a hard act to follow after the company’s fantastic “Kooza” of 2007.  That show, written and directed by David Shiner, was one of the best Cirque shows ever to visit Toronto.  It attempted to return to the origins of the company by placing greater emphasis on a narrative as a context for its sequence of amazing circus acts.  Cirque 25th show in 25 years, “OVO”, written and directed by Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker takes a different tack.  There is a very loose narrative, but her main strategy is to plunge us fully into a bizarre but beautiful alien world.  To that end she seeks a greater unity of design and impact through a greater integration of every aspect of the show.  The overriding imagery of “OVO” is insect life and every aspect of the show from the costumes and set to the music and presentation of the circus acts is related to it.  If only she had devised a satisfying conclusion for the evening, “OVO” could rival “Kooza” as an artistic success.

Unlike other Cirque shows, there are no warm-up clowns for “OVO” and no master of ceremonies.  Instead, as we enter the blue-and-yellow Grand Chapiteau in Toronto’s Port Lands, we are confronted with mysterious gigantic egg, presumably the “OVO” of the title, sitting on an oddly shaped stage.  This is not the usual circular thrust stage but a thrust in trefoil form, thus already leading us into the world of plants and their inhabitants.  After the lights go out the come up again on a vivid scene of all manner of insect life encouraged to wake from their slumber by Master Flipo (Joseph Collard) the head clown sporting colourful antennae. 

In terms of story, the insect world of ants, fleas, spiders, crickets and scarabs is disrupted by the arrival of the Foreigner (François-Guillaume Leblanc), a shiny, spiny blue bottle fly, with a large egg strapped to his back.  This object causes general awe in the populus and it is immediately snatched away from the Foreigner.  It reappears in the possession of various characters and is mentioned throughout the show, but anyone seeking plot development involving the egg will be severely disappointed since nothing whatsoever happens with it.  Instead, the plot focusses on the Foreigner’s arrival attracting the attention of a lovely chubby Ladybug (Michelle Matlock) and most of the evening’s humour consists of the Foreigner’s maladroit attempts to woo her, her comic huffs and Master Flipo’s attempts to instruct the blue bottle in the art of courtship.

The clown story, however, only really provides interludes between the circus acts rather than binding them together.  That function is performed by the extraordinary integration of production elements.  Gringo Cardia has designed the trefoil stage, the giant climbable dandelion stalks and the sails at the back that look like neuron-shaped cobwebs.  There are also two enormous flowers hidden at either side of the stage that magically open to an impossibly large size before closing again.  Liz Vandal has designed the incredible imaginative costumes, looking like a cross between Issey Miyake and Dr. Seuss, comic as for the Ladybug and blue bottle, impressive as for the Scarabs menacing as for the Stick Insect or eerily beautiful as for the Dragonfly and Butterflies.  The real winner, though, has to be the fantastic green outfits with cleverly attached, super-sized hind legs of the Crickets.  Julie Bégin’s makeup completes the effect for each creature.  Eric Champoux’s lighting creates the general impression that the action takes place at night with the ending at break of day.  Colker has ensured that the performers of various acts do just appear and disappear.  Rather they interact with each other throughout the show to a far greater extent than in previous Cirque extravaganzas.  Six leaf-carrying Ants, for example, seen in Act 1, appear as an audience for a contortionist Spider in Act 2.  Besides this, Colker has choreographed every movement so that performers not in action do not merely stand, as is usual, but artfully pose or dance between activities.

Berna Ceppas’s music has a distinctly South American flavour that imitates and is sometimes mixed with actual insect sounds.  All this, along with Jonathan Dean’s 360 degree sound design gives the impression of our having been shrunken to insect size and completely immersed in their world.  No other Cirque show I have seen so completely achieves this effect.  Indeed, the whole show is very much like the first twenty minutes of the musical “The Lion King”, the best part, recast as “A Bug’s Life”.  In fact, so amazing are the stunt we see in this setting that I frequently had to remind myself that I was seeing a live show rather than a movie with unbelievably advanced CGI.  Any movie effects today, even in 3-D, pale in comparison to seeing real bodies moving in real three-dimensional space. 

Colker paces the show well.  After the initial group dance, we move to a Dragonfly (Vladimir Hrynchenko), whose hand-balancing act is both a test of strength and balance and uncommonly beautiful.  Next we move on to the foot-juggling of six Chinese Ants, first plying their Icarian games with gigantic slices of kiwifruit then with miniature cobs of corn and finally, and most amazingly, with each other.  Following this are the sensual moves of two Butterflies (Maxim Kozlov and Inna Mayorova), in a rope act called the “Spanish web” that involves various climbs, poses, holds and releases for both on the same rope.   For many the highlight of the first act will be Tony Frebourg’s Firefly whose lightning-fast moves and tent-top-high tosses with up to four diabolos are simply mind-boggling.  The first half finishes with the intriguing assembly of the largest apparatus ever used in a Cirque show and the careful rigging of its weblike safety net.  This unique aerial act for Scarabs combines several types of circus acts in one--banquine, Russian swing and swinging chair--a bit like floor tumbling except done in the air using trapezes instead of a teeterboard for lift.  

The pacing is similar in the second half, staring small and becoming big.  First up is a contortionist Spider (Svetlana Belova) who can easily sit on her own head and watch her feet scurry by in front of her.  Next comes the acrosport of a group of five Fleas who toss each other into the air and recombine in graceful formations.  The most impressive act, however, is that of another Spider (Lie Wei) on the slack wire.  Who many people can do a handstand on the floor or on a solid bar?  Li Wei does them with ease of a moving slack wire and walk hand over hand along it and ride a unicycle upside down along it.  He is simply amazing.  As a transition we see the arrival of the Creatura (Lee Brearley), look rather like two brown furry caterpillars forming an ex whose Slinky-toy limbs comically lengthen or shorten at will, and tie themselves into knots, only to loosen again for a dance. The climax involves the brilliant green Crickets.  The weblike skins have been removed from what looks like an eight-meter-high rock-climbing wall, hidden trampolines are uncovered below it and the stage surface that looked so solid slides open to reveal a power track just below the surface.  This fantastic act sees the Crickets fall from the wall only to rise up and attach themselves and scurry up again while some bounce onto the power track and perform complex tumbling line before landing on the very edge of the stage front.  So much motion up and down the back wall causes the dizzying illusion that the back wall is really the floor and we are watching all the action from above.  

This great combination of design, action and illusion causes a real sense of elation.  If only Colker, could have thought of a proper finale we would have left walking on a cloud.  Instead, she has the cast bring out a large table which we think is the set-up for another act.  Before we know it the various insect performers have stepped up onto the table and down to receive applause.  It was about halfway through this that I and the rest of the audience realized that this was the curtain call.  The egg of the title is paraded about leaving us to expect more will happen.  Eventually we see that all the cast are around the rim of the stage motion to us to stand up.  

Every previous Cirque show I have attended has received a spontaneous standing ovation.  It is strange, to say the least, that Colker could have managed the complex interactions of the show up to tis point without being able to signal the ending clearly.  Besides that, when the performers depart she leaves us with the image of the egg at the table.  Much of the audience did not leave but remained standing hoping to see the egg hatch.  After all, what would be the most logical conclusion?  And since when does a prop brought on a Cirque stage not do something?  But, alas, no.  We waited in vain.  All that needed to happen was for the egg to hatch and some cute child-sized insects to emerge to round of the show.  But, as I have said, nothing happens, and we drop down from our elation into a feeling of bewilderment and disappointment.  

“OVO” is so good right from the start through the Cricket act that it is a real shame it should fumble just at the end and leave us less than satisfied.  I do hope that Cirque du Soleil are able to correct this flaw before the show continues its tour after Toronto.  “OVO” is almost perfect.  But Cirque du Soleil has garnered such huge acclaim in only 25 years, “almost” is not enough.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: The Ants in OVO. ©Sara Krulwich.