Insect extravaganza banishes bugbears
Something unexpected happened to me while watching the latest show to visit our shores from that billion-dollar-raking, globe-bestriding French-canadian behemoth Cirque du Soleil. I laughed. A lot. What’s going on? Have those notoriously effortful clowning interludes suddenly got funny?
I can’t quite say that they have – though they are a lot less irritating than usual. No, it’s that coursing through Ovo – Portuguese for “egg” – lies something I haven’t detected in Cirque extravaganzas for many a moon: a winning sense of humour, a quality of absurdity which, if not rivalling the tongue-in-cheek spirit of British circus at its best, suggests that this company need not be a byword for super-slick showmanship steeped in Gallic bombast.
The source of the mirth lies in the simple overarching concept. Ovo ushers in an insect invasion; you might call it “Night at the Natural History Museum”. The stage is alive with grasshoppers, dragonflies, butterflies and more besides, as if magnified for our delectation; recognisable characteristics alluded to in colourful, quirky costumes and partially mimicked movement.
The Cirque we’ve come to know and dread could have used this subject as an opportunity to lay on thoughts of eco catastrophe with a trowel. Not so here: with a cheering, Brazilianinspired live score, the aim seems to be to get us to love the aliens beneath our feet, kindling Attenborough-esque wonder at life on Earth, while getting us to admire human prowess.
Insects were big in the Victorian age – fleas jumped for their supper, and you could also behold wasp tamers, dancing snails and beetle-mania. There’s a point of comparison, clearly, too, with animations like A Bug’s Life. But the beauty of Ovo is that it’s sui generis, defying easy categorisation just as its physical feats defy gravity.
An egg lugged on by a (man-sized) fly sets up a storyline thread of unrequited romance – this visitor must lock antennae with an oldster for the affections of a gobbledegook-spouting ladybird. The rival wields a can of fly-killer but the interloper eagerly inhales the fumes and much of what we see smacks of an hallucinogenic trip.
A colony of Chinese ant-acrobats foot-juggle scaled-up kiwi slices in breathtaking unison; Kyle Cragle contorts his spine with superhuman finesse, hymning the delicacy and strength of the dragonfly; Catherine Audy and Alexis Trudel leave you swooning as they execute a mid-air pas de deux soaring this way and that like midsummer butterflies.
There’s a slight dip in the second half, although it’s amply compensated for by the climactic “Trampo Wall”, in which daredevils dressed as crickets execute blurringly fast tumbles and insouciantly bounce up an 8-metre vertical wall, like a SWAT team from outer space. Very clever, very droll and just what the winter requires: quelle joie to find a Cirque show that banishes the usual bugbears.