From the surreal to the sublime
Using a Salvador Dali painting for inspiration, director Daniele Finzi Pasca has created an ambitious, visually ravishing work of performance art that blends elements of circus, dance, theatre and opera in La Verita.
What makes this spectacle unique is not only that it references a specific scrim painted by Dali in 1940 for Mad Tristan, an adaptation of Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde, but that it manages to tune into the mad Spanish surrealist’s wavelength and channel his vision.
Working with a dozen multitalented acrobats who sing, dance, clown and play musical instruments as well as tumble and soar, Finzi Pasca and his creative team have created a stunning parade of tableaux vivants, punctuated by the rising and lowering of backdrops, including the priceless Dali. (Which gets a generous amount of exposure throughout the show.)
At its best, La Verita touches the sublime, with lighting effects (codesigned by Alexis Bowles and Finzi Pasca), sound, music and choreography (by Maria Bonzanigo), at one with the evocative sets and props designed by Hugo Gargiulo. The music is often solemn and ceremonial, creating a mystical feel. The water-glass-symphony interlude enchants.
In one cabaret scene, as a female acrobat dangles from a metal outline of an eye above a grand piano, one rhinoceros-headed performer plays the piano and another places the sheet music, only to see each sheet drift upward, as if by magic.
The second act group number involving a huge rolling metal ball that seems to endanger the lives of the graceful performers who play in, on and under it, is polished to dreamy perfection.
The amazing juggling act, featuring one man in a red tutu (David Menes, who excels at just about everything he does) and another in a striped jacket, becomes a collective exercise. I’ve seen many juggling acts before, but never one with so many performers keeping the balls in motion all at once.
The pair of roller skaters whirling on a small round platform are impressive, set up nicely by group drumming and shouts of encouragement from the rest of the cast. But anyone who has seen Robert Lepage’s Cirque du Soleil show Totem has already witnessed a more daring version of the same act.
Many of the performers are familiar, having previously worked with Cirque Éloize or Cirque du Soleil. The rubber-jointed contortionist, Felix Salas, appeared in Finzi Pasca’s most recent hit, Donka, for example. Acrobat Catherine Girard has performed with all of Montreal’s top circuses, including 7 Doigts de la Main
The wittiest of the clown gambits involves quicksilver costume changes accomplished by Beatriz Sayad and Rolando Tarquini with the intervention of an angel with billowing white wings. But these two have some lame numbers, too, particularly one in which they play “soldiers” toying with their pole “rifles.” Painfully unfunny.
The opening and closing mock dance numbers, the first a send-up of a Ziegfeld follies fan-dancer extravaganza, and the latter a Folies Bergère cancan romp, are spirited and startling, but only mildly amusing. (Lots of men in dresses.)
Finzi Pasca is good at creating theatrical moments through accumulation of symbolic images. Sometimes his wandering characters on the set upstage the acrobats breaking the focus at the wrong moment. But truth be told, although La Verita is uneven and remains in need of fine-tuning, it’s a memorable poetic wonder.