Word: soleils
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...time is ripe to dump on Cirque du Soleil. This Montreal-based troupe has been an item of import chic since 1987, when it began touring the U.S. with a show called Le Cirque Reinvente. The Cirque style--circus acts (no animals, just humans) with the gloss of stage magic and a mysterioso musical score--is no longer an automatic astonishment; form has congealed into formula. Putting one of its extravaganzas, Mystere, in a Las Vegas casino and planning new shows in Vegas and Walt Disney World are moves that rob Cirque of its old street-theater purity. Then there...
...mixed Southern with Greek, pyrotechnics with Pindar, avant-garde with antebellum, pickup trucks with riverboats, the gargantuan with the precious. Like Atlanta, it desperately wanted to be liked by everybody, and it succeeded. The Call to the Nations, which opened the show, recalled both the French-Canadian Cirque du Soleil, which was a creative consultant, as well as a Brazilian samba school. Yet the two songs were written by two distinctly American composers: Summon the Heroes by Academy Award winner John Williams and The Call to the Nations by Mickey Hart, the drummer for The Grateful Dead. For the national...
...HAVE ABOLISHED the army, but life is still perilous on Haiti's mean streets, where the poor are growing impatient and predatory. Near the National Palace, a woman who cadges $1 secretes it for safekeeping in her underpants. A gang of thugs dubbed the Red Army ravages Cite Soleil, a Port-au-Prince slum that police are afraid to enter: the last time they did, a shoot-out claimed the lives of several innocent bystanders. In La Saline members of a local vigilante patrol discover the dead body of their leader. They swiftly select four suspected "robbers" and beat them...
Punctuating the chaos are three fine acrobat acts, in the Cirque du Soleil mode, of which trapezist Helene Turcotte, a muscular beauty, is the champion enthraller. But these oases of grace only underline the frenetic naivete of the rest of Pomp Duck. After 3 1/2 hours of the chef chasing the chanteuse, visitors rush out to inhale that acrid New York air as if it were attar of roses. Even Hell's Kitchen is preferable to hell's kitsch...
...Kutash says, "which is the key to making it in Vegas. How many magic shows can you have, how many French shows, how many circus shows, before you become redundant?" Steve Wynn will test that premise next year. His Beau Rivage will feature a new production by Cirque du Soleil: a water show. It may be great. But to be a true Vegas show, it will have to be like nothing--and everything-you've seen before. With music...