Review - Quidam - Cirque du Soleil, Toronto

✭✭✭✭✩

written and directed by Franco Dragone

Cirque du Soleil, Ricoh Coliseum, Toronto

December 20-30, 2011;

General Motors Centre, Oshawa, January 4-8, 2012;

WFCU Centre, Windsor, January 11-15, 2012

Quidam is the ninth show created by Cirque du Soleil. It premiered under the Grand Chapiteau, or big top, in Montreal in 1996, but has since been converted to an arena show for the 2009 international tour that has just now reached Toronto. The show is a reminder of what made the company famous--its presentation of circus acts as part of a unified narrative. Recent Cirque shows like OVO (2009) and Totem (2010) are more high-tech and feature more elaborate costumes and makeup, but in them the emphasis on technology and design tended to overwhelm an already weak storyline. In Quidam writer and director Franco Dragone strikes just the right balance and the arena format will now make one of Cirque du Soleil’s best-ever shows available to an even larger number of people than before.

One of the earliest Cirque du Soleil shows, Nouvelle Expérience (1987) showed what happened when a family accidentally is mistaken for circus artists and how it changed their lives. Quidam looks back at that idea from a different, more sophisticated angle. After a crowd warm-up with genial, lanky-limbed host John (Mark Ward), we meet the girl Zoé (Alessandra Gonzalez) and her parents. Zoé’s parents sit apart in huge chairs and are cut off--the father hidden in his newspaper, the mother staring forward glazed and unhappy--leaving Zoé frustrated and bored. The only hints that there is another side to the parents is the red dress of the Mother (Denise Wal) that contrasts with the uniformly grey surroundings and the white acrobat’s shoes of the Father (Patrick McGuire). Suddenly a headless man with a blue bowler hat appears at the door. He is the “quidam” or “nameless passer-by” of the Latin title. He gives the hat to Zoé. When she puts it on the everyday world around her rises and vanishes in a fantastically theatrical scene to be replaced by the world of the circus, or more correctly by her imagination as reflected in circus acts. John slips on the Father’s shows and becomes Zoé’s guide through this new world.

Quidam boasts a stronger sense of cohesion than many Cirque shows, both because the acts are thematically related and because the acts reflect stages in the healing of Zoé’s family. The first act is dominated by circles, loops and ropes announced in the thrilling form of Cory Sylvester’s act on the German Wheel. Since a performer normally manipulates this double-rimmed wheel in the positions depicted in Da Vinci’s famous sketch of “Vitruvian Man”, it is a fitting metaphor for a young person beginning to learn how she fits into the world. Unlike Vitruvian man, however, Sylvester does not remain inside the wheel but daringly thrusts his head and torso between the rims seeming to risk smashing himself against the floor just before he pulls in at the last moment.

Continuing the theme of the control of spinning worlds is the next act of four artists (Mangyi Wang, Shengnan Pan, Yaxuan Xu and Lu Zhou) with synchronized diabolos, those spools that look like two cones fixed tip to tip manipulated with a string attached to two handles. Synchronized throws and catches of the diabolos are impressive enough as are the ways the four can keep the devices spinning while passing the cords around their bodies. But what amazes is the ability to cast the diabolo with its string and handles into the air to be caught by another in increasing complex patterns.

Dragone hits the most emotional note in the show with Isabelle Vaudelle’s aerial contortion in silk. Contrary to most aerial silk acts, Vaudelle’s act suggests spiritual torment. She tries to seclude herself in a cocoon of the silk only to emerge in a series of painful-looking angular falls. The act concludes with Vaudelle seeming to commit suicide by hanging herself from the silk. It is no accident that the silks are red and that the Mother looks on anxiously from the back as if Vaudelle were acting out her innermost fears.

The theme of ropes changes from tragedy to comedy with the emergence of the entire company with jump ropes. Into their midst enter jump rope masters Norihisa Taguchi and Kata Banhegyi, who are able to more tricks with jump ropes than you ever imagined and who can skip rope with unbelievable rapidity. This sequence is beautifully built up reaching a climax when Taguchi is skipping rope inside a rope turned by two people skipping double dutch inside two other ropes. The scene concludes with the whole community of artists skipping rope in various combinations in joyful celebration of the ability to play. Much as the following sequence of aerial hoops is beautiful to watch, the jump rope sequence builds to such a high that it would have been better to have it conclude the first act.

The second act morphs in theme from the human body as a master of devices to that of the human body mastering itself. The change is announced with Anna Ostapenko’s stunning hand balancing act but is linked to the first act since not only do her hand perches revolve but the entire stage revolves as she performs.

This is followed by more ropes but this times as Spanish Webs performed as a group act. Like aerial silk, Spanish Web involves climbing ropes, entwining the body in them in various configurations leading to spectacular releases and drops. Here the five artists work in synchrony and, significantly, the woman playing the Mother is one of the artists.

The emotional high point of act two is undoubtedly the “Statue” performed by Alexandre Pestov and Natalia Pestova. Appearing nearly unclad the two slowly move from one exquisite position to the next, each dependent on the combined strength and balance of the two. You could hardly hope for a more profound image of the beauty created by harmony between male and female than you see in this act. Significantly, Dragone has both the Mother and the Father watch this act with a sense of longing.

A parallel to Vaudelle’s aerial contortion in silk of Act One is Christy Shelper’s wild Cloud Swing of Act Two. Again we have a rope, this time in the form of a giant loop that Shelper uses as if it were a trapeze. Entwining her ankles around the rope she seems to cast herself off the trapeze only to swing round and catch the ropes again. If Vaudelle’s act depicted despair and confinement, Shelper’s celebrates freedom and mastery.

The show concludes with a group performance of the ancient art of banquine where artists using only each other for aerial boosts, forming human pyramids. The sequence is such a wonderful blend of choreography and acrobatics, it’s hard to tell when one stops and the other begins. The sequence reaches a climax when a young girl is boosted high into the air to be caught like a bird by a man standing on the shoulders of another standing on the shoulders of a third. Not only is it absolutely thrilling but it seems to symbolize the finally freeing of Zoé, who has watched every act intently, and her parents from their doldrums through the wonderful revelation of the myriad possibilities of humankind.

The character who sums up the spirit of the show is one called The Target (Ardee Dionisio) because of the red spiral painted on his costume. As much dancer as acrobat, he whisks in and out through the show tying the various acts together. Special mention must be made of Voki Kalfayan, one of the best clowns in any Cirque show. Both his scenes are thematically linked to the action. In the first, a clowning classic, Kalfayan invites a woman from the audience for a date in his invisible car. In the second Kalfayan chooses three people from the audience to play actors and one as crew in a silent melodrama about a man who discovers his beloved in the arms of another. Kalfayan’s impeccable timing, fantastic ability at mime and most of all is ability to improvise using whatever accidents may happen made his scene absolutely hilarious.

Playing in an arena instead of in the Grand Chapiteau does mean a loss of intimacy. Everyone is farther from the stage than they would be in a big top. The sound and light control console is not in the back of the auditorium but in the front so that those in the centre stadium seats have to look over its distracting lights to see the stage. Though Franco Dragone has made this more conceptually rich and cohesive than many other Cirque du Soleil shows, he does have the one flaw of directing the action to face forward too often. While the audience is seated in 180˚ around the thrust stage, the action is best seen by those in the centre 100˚. A friend seated in the expensive seats in of the side sections reported that too many acts, especially in Act One, were performed downstage of the median line of the stage. The result is that in some acts--such as the diabolo girls, the master rope skippers and the invisible car sequence--the performers were all lined up and what they were doing was hidden.

These difficulties apart, the benefits of arena staging outweigh the disadvantages simply because it brings Cirque du Soleil to so many more communities. Since Quidam is one of the company’s all-time best works, you certainly won’t want to miss it.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

For tickets, visit www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/quidam/default.aspx.

2011-12-22

Quidam