AFTER SOME 25 years, no one needs to explain that Cirque du Soleil is the one without the Guatemalan tiger taunters. But the popularity comes at a price: Cirque’s large shows are dazzling, but they sometimes sacrifice intimacy and narrative. I saw Ka in Las Vegas, and after 45 minutes, all I could tell was that it seemed to be about pirates.
The new show, Ovo, by contrast, is exactly the kind of show that made Cirque famous when it began: a tent and a straightforward cavalcade of acts and characters linked by clowns. Americans hate clowns because we never get any good ones, as filmmaker Whit Stillman once quipped about Europeans and hamburgers. Cirque solves the problem with the graceful female Columbine-clown tumblers and the concentration and subtlety of their miming.
The opening set is a 15-foot-high egg, dappled, the color of the planet Mars, sitting on what looks like the black polished lid of a colossal grand piano. Ovo‘s décor is like a cross between belle époque France and Mattel Thingmaker Fun Flowers: there are reminders of Lalique enameled scarabs or early Ballets Russes costumes in the wiry plumes on an acrobat’s forehead. An acrobat performs on a trapeze modeled on Hector Guimard’s viny ironwork for the Paris Métro.
Ovo‘s bug theme begins with mysterious beekeepers stalking the audience. It continues with episodes about a romantic triangle: a bald pantaloon of a ringmaster and a dizzy stick insect contend for a plus-size ladybug. When necessary, the old bug doses the younger with a tank of insecticide to calm him down. This induces hallucinations. Most bizarre of these visions is a modified lion dance performed by “Creatura” (Lee Brearley), a headless furry nudibranch, doing the shimmy, the bump and the Humpty Dance all by itself at the same time.
Red ant–costumed performers foot-juggle oversize slices of kiwi and corncobs, which they turn on their sides and use as congas—in between the so-called “Icarian games” during which they juggle each other. The incredible diabolo performer hurls his spool-like yo-yo nearly to the top of the tent. And the slack-wire walker Li Wei takes an upside-down ride on a tiny unicycle, which he operates like an eggbeater.
The second half of the show opens with a trio of contortionist black widows. Since there are legions of screenwriters who can’t figure out how to come up with Spider-Man IV, why don’t they go see Ovo? It might shake something loose, creatively speaking.
Maxim Kozlov and Inna Mayorova appear as a matched pair of Spanish web/corde lisse performers. Costumed in tights with cocoa veins on them, like the traced frosting on petits fours, they tie themselves in Kama Sutra–like love knots 15 feet off the ground.
The live band holds the mystifying show together from the overture to the finale. It features an ace accordionist and a sultry female vocalist who contributes to a never-clashing roster of sounds from techno to tango nuevo. At one point, the band has a dispute with the ringmaster, causing a mashup of Beethoven’s Fifth into “La Cucaracha.”
The finale is one of Cirque’s greatest showpieces: simple yet astonishing. A trampoline at stage level stands at the base of a rock-climbing wall. Human grasshoppers leap and carom up and against the wall. They stick, release their holds and bounce back into place. It looks more like an illusion than a circus act.
What it really looks like is the kind of silent-movie stunt where an actor is made to leap in the air, through the effect of running the film backward after he’s taken a fall. One stares and sees how it’s done, but no amount of staring can get you used to the idea. Ovo gets its title from its egg imagery; it could also get its title because it deserves an ovation.
OVO runs Feb. 4–March 7 in the Grand Chapiteau at Taylor Street Bridge in San Jose. Tickets start at $42. (800.450.1480)
