Review of Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo by Nigel Beale.
When Cirque du Soleil rocks, it’s thanks to beautiful powerful music and dizzying, superhuman acrobatic displays by chiseled gymnasts.
I saw Corteo last week. It rocked. At least when the troupe was trampoleening on beds, bounding across the stage on bouncy nets, seducing in rag-doll sexy dress from high hung chandeliers, gliding and dancing and twirling through the air; throwing girls around, and spinning on parallel bars.
The best acts in this mixed platter were the one where muscular men spun at unbelievable speeds in large hoola-hoops, and a Slavic couple who flew through the air assuming extraordinarily difficult, yet elegant, erotic positions.
This show was filled with high and low lights. My sense is that Cirque in Corteo tries too hard to be everything to everyone. The event would have been much better had it focused on appealing either to an audience solely of children or of adults. Not both.
The storyline was thin, barely even a conceit. An old man on a deathbed at his funeral sees the events of his life dancing past him. The music was not memorable. The tightrope act failed, I think, not because of a fall, but because the walker had a wire attached to her behind: it suspended her, but took all the suspense out of the spectacle. There was a silly two person horse, a whistling ringmaster, a glass top rubbing musical number. None worked for me. The final act however was thrilling, with everyone on stage, it seemed, synchronized and spinning on gymnastic bars to a robust, high flying tune.
I attended Saltimbanco years ago in Toronto. It rests in my memory as something magical, both because of its music and its elaborate other-worldy feel. Corteo is not magic. It resembled an old time vaudeville act; a circus. The flying angels were pretty, the costumes were colourful, some of the acts were truly engaging, which made the watching worthwhile. But it wasn’t fantastic, or fantastical, which unfortunately is what I had hoped and expected to see.