Corteo, Cirque du Soleil. Photo by MajaPrgomet

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The Cirque du Soleil has always been a purveyor of the death-defying (gravity be gone!). Corteo, the 2005 Cirque show that’s ensconced for seven performances at Rogers Place, turns its imaginative eye on death: a clown dreams his own funeral.

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And, lo and behold, in Corteo (Italian for cortege) Mauro’s dream is anything but static or sombre. The improbable virtuosos of the storied Canadian company, an international cast of 60, inhabit a free-floating dreamscape of beautiful images and perpetual motion. Angels float by and hover over his bed, angelic stage management par excellence. One teaches him how to fly, and why not? “It’s just like swimming.”

Harlequins appear. Some of them play the appealing klezmer-flavoured score (by Jean-François Coté). One arrives upside down on a tight wire high in the air and holding a candelabra. Funeral parades form, and turn into dance parties. In the stunning opening sequence, women from Mauro’s past, dressed in the floaty lingerie of the 19th century (the work of costume designer Dominique Lemieux) do intricate acrobatics on a trio of sparkling giant chandeliers. O death, where is thy sting?

Corteo, Cirque du Soleil. Photo by MajaPrgomet

A celebratory energy presides in the piece created and directed by circus arts specialist Daniele Finzi Pasca in his debut Cirque assignment. And the personable Mauro (Gonzalo Munoz Ferrer) gets off his death bed in a period suit (the costumes are always fun to look at) to join in. In fact, one of the most energetically ‘impromptu’ scenes is a playful bed-bouncing pillow fight, conjured from childhood, in which all participants amazingly miss braining themselves on the brass bedsteads in the course of triple-somersaults.

Since 2016, the Cirque has toured the show, which premiered in Montreal under the the Grand Chapiteau (the Big Top), to larger-scale arenas, like our own vast hockey emporium. For the occasion, designer Jean Rabasse divides the audience in half, on either side of a stage with a baroque Italianate proscenium frame, decorated by cupids. So we can see a version of ourselves, watching the watchers onstage. The observers in every scene, wonder-generators, are something of a Cirque signature. The stage floor, incidentally, is painted with a labyrinth that, according to the press kit, reproduces “a classic design  on the floor of the aisle in Chartres Cathedral.” Four bands occupy the corners, two on either side, and the singers wander in and out of the stage action and join tableaux of observers from time to time.

And another Cirque signature is an aesthetic with an appetite for surreal imagery, like the unoccupied gaggle of shoes and boots that crosses the stage and disappears through a sort of stage manhole — a possible variation of the clown classic pratfall, minus the human participants.

What’s missing, perhaps, is the mythic resonance of shows like Varekai or Kurios. Ah, or OVO, the last Cirque arena show to come to Edmonton There’s a looser, more free-associative frame in Corteo. But you could argue that dreamscapes, after all, don’t have narrative logic to them; they work the way memory works, by free association.

Having said that, I have to say the Scottish golf scene, with a  human ball, lost me. Mauro seems to be borrowing someone else’s memory, possibly from another show. When it rains rubber chickens and they get juggled, well, haven’t we all dreamed that?

The ultimate dream image? A little person (Anita Szentes), a clown small of stature and huge in charm, attached to giant balloons, floats above the stage, and then the crowd, in an enchantingly weird sequence. We join in to push her feet up and back into the air — audience participation at its oddest. And she rewards us with air kisses. This charismatic personage is the centrepiece of a moment, borrowed from Fellini, in which she and a second Little Clown (Viktor Sovpenets) are on a pedestal. She dances with a giant (Victorino Lujan), sprinkled by an airborne angel with falling show — a human snow globe.

Corteo, Cirque du Soleil. Photo by MajaPrgomet

In the marriage of theatre and circus arts which is the particular genius of the Cirque du Soleil, dreams are the playground for the improbable virtuosos, limber beyond the human, who populate the show. A contortionist (Santé Fortunato) who spins multiple hula hoops while contorting. A team of trapeze acrobats who fling women through the air at each other from opposing towers. Performers of impossible strength and suppleness like the beautiful woman (Stéphanie Altman) who suspends herself into balletic shapes on a swinging pole way above the stage. Or the artists who hurl themselves at terrifying speed off and around a cube of horizontal bars in a complex choreography of near-misses. If they weren’t in perfect sync, you can’t help thinking they’d kill each other. Or the artist (Roman Munin) who somehow manages to climb a free-standing ladder; ah, the route to heaven is precarious my friends.

Corteo, Cirque du Soleil. Photo by MajaProgomet

And in one of the most memorable scenes, no high-flying or gravity defiance at all is involved: the eerie music of a virtuoso whistler (also the “ringmaster”) and the the celestial sound of Tibetan glass and crystal bowls played by performers scattered across the stage.

I have to say that Act II doesn’t sustain the creative theatrical energy of Act I, despite continued angelic intervention. A farcically chaotic scene in an adorable miniature theatre, as Romeo and Juliet falls apart, seems like an elaborate interpolation, for example, and thuds. The clowning palls, and the production becomes a showcase for, admittedly formidable, circus skills.

Or is that a measure of how fast your sense of wonder gets a bit jaded? The Cirque is always the victim of the law of diminishing returns.

The theatricality of the concept may flag after intermission. But the visuals are superb, all retro lighting, costumes, and pageantry. And the reinvention of the unatmospheric cavern that is Rogers includes a top-drawer audio refit. It’s a treat to hear live musicians deliver an attractively exotic score. Great entertainment.

REVIEW

Corteo

Theatre: Cirque du Soleil

Created and directed by: Daniele Finzi Pasca

Where: Rogers Place

Running: through Sunday

Tickets: ticketmaster.ca, cirquedusoleil.com