VAREKAI : CIRQUE DE SOLEIL
Royal
Albert Hall, London. January 5th 2010. 1930 – 2230.
Wherever
the wind carries you, you will always be home.
It may be called Cirque de Soleil but there is something about the spaces between the
bodies of colour and the spectacular lighting that takes you far away from the
Royal Albert Hall. The hall’s usually characteristic organ vanishes into a
fairytale forest swarming with fantastical creatures. The domed ceiling
disappears, shrouded in space-light. The audience shifts and sighs with the
bamboo reeds and the hollow tuned music. You really are in the embrace of
Wherever: Varekai.
The first sounds are rustling, the odd chippers
of inhuman creatures, the odd tweet or cackle from the sky or gurgling from the
deeps. Then a voice, a call to dance, appealing to all sorts of phantasms: the
nymph-like, the bug-like, the bird-like and then, with a shiver they creep back
into the safety of shadows. One strange creature remains – looking like a cross
between a man and yellow corn, he peddles a contraption reminiscent of the
winning log-chopper from Disney’s Beauty
and the Beast. His is a slapstick piece based on sound – competing nature
and technology and setting the stage for the characters we are about to see
burst forth in deep blues and reds and yellows and in sunlight. The story is
vague, as nebulous and luminescent as the stage’s moonlit fantasia, but at its
centre is Icarus. Falling in a
looping, twisting descent from sun-yellow smoke into the twilight world below, he
comes face to face with the impossible and with love.
Sinking into this magic-filled world for
the first-time is almost too easy. Unencumbered by expectation, the suspension
of disbelief departs with the first dazzling display of dancers dipping and
darting between bamboo trees. Yet what really captivates and enthrals is the
music. The music is a character of its own – representing nature, echoing the
voices of the creatures below, reflecting the depth and complexities of emotion
and leading the audience by the hand as the journey continues. Peppered by
babble beyond translation, the music takes from a plethora of different
influences. The chorus recalls Eric Whittaker, the solos Lebo M, the fiddle Le
Boheme: the swirl of calypso and samba soaring into Asian overtures.
There is too much to say. The acrobatics
are extraordinary, breath-taking and terrifying. There were times when the
temptation to turn your gaze was almost impossible to resist, but the music
urges you on. The comedy draws laugh after laugh from the audience, even the
slightly out-of-place Butlins act which sees a magician trying and failing to
control his blond-haired assistant who similarly tries and fails to stay
standing in her heels.
Of course, as the reputation Cirque de
Soleil suggests, there is a price as extravagant as the show. Tickets start at
£41, programmes at £12 and drinks, ice creams or nibbles in the interval come
with typically immoderate mark-ups. However, if asked whether that price was
worth paying the answer would have to be yes. For a moment, the briefest flash
of time, the world falls away, the impossible becomes possible and the darkness
of space becomes more fantastic that the glamorous lights of the circus.
Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER
