Katy and I (along with a bunch of office folk) went to see Kooza at the RAH this past Sunday. I have to say, it’s not the best Cirque du Soleil show I’ve seen. I agree with the Guardian review I’ve included below. The individual acts border on brilliance. The clowns though… are simply BLOODY IRRITATING!!! They’re not funny. They take center-stage for waaaay too long, and they’re bordering on inappropriate for the target market. I do not need to see a clown humping a man’s leg or being spanked in the balls. Masturbation-based slapstick belong in a frat house, not in a Cirque show. Still, as I said earlier, the individual acts are amazing, but the whole packaging lets it down. I’m happy to have seen it for £35. I would have been pissed off to see it for £100.
Another new year, another Cirque du Soleil juggernaut rolls into town. This one – which has toured worldwide (the £10 programme comes in three languages) – may be new to the UK, but the formula remains the same. There are lots of costumes in easy-on-the-eye autumn hues, which make the performers look like indistinguishable aliens on their way to a Venice carnival. There’s an abundance of shopping centre-style muzak. There’s a great deal of symmetrical choreography, which lends the whole thing the air of a May Day parade in a minor authoritarian state, and the show is padded out to last three hours with clowns so deeply irritating that they are no laughing matter.
Strip away all the bombast and soft-focus window dressing, though, and you’ll find some truly remarkable circus acts on display. The main thrill is the wheel of death, performed with a devilish nonchalance by two men who seem to be out-running the grim reaper in the way they hurl themselves around and over the fast rotating wheels. There’s an impressive handstand act performed on a tower of chairs that never wobble, and you can’t help but admire the bravery of the teeterboard segment on stilts. Definitely not the sort of thing you should try at home.
Add to that a double high-wire act on bicycles and a swinging trapeze with triple twists, and there’s no doubt you are watching some of the most skilled performers in the world. So it seems all the more of a pity that the presentation deliberately strips away all personality and robs the performers of their humanity (there’s not even a cast list in the programme).
It makes for an evening that is impressive, but almost entirely soulless.
Original link: The Guardian