Send in the clowns
Half-hearted Empire may make for good Instagram photos, but that’s about it
Circuses are the original theatres-in-the-round, meaning that half the audience gets a good view of the other half. The view on the first night of Empire, a sort of circus that’s pitched its tent down by the Toronto lakeshore, revealed a lot of people taking pictures on their phones, whether of the show itself or of themselves taking pictures of the show. Most live entertainments begin with admonitions to the audience to refrain from the use of recording devices of any kind. Not this one: it exists to go viral. In that regard, it’s a dispiriting look at the possible future, indeed of the probable present. It isn’t the evening out that matters; it’s the morning after.
This may also account for the curious half-heartedness of the show itself; it doesn’t even officially start — with a clangorous call of “Welcome to Empire” — until we’ve already been watching it for half an hour. During this preliminary period, with the house lights on, performers have been milling around in fairly aimless fashion. One of them is a pirate sort of guy in a blue silk shirt; another is a lady who appears to be following the old theatrical maxim, “If you can’t be funny, wear a big hat.” There’s some nondescript dancing, and a man who produces what I took to be an egg from inside his pants, then holds them open while other cast members, looking bored, pelt him what I took to be tennis balls. Somewhat more interestingly, a young woman in her underwear gyrates inside a revolving globe, receiving thunderous applause when she does the splits. As her act concludes, the air fills with soap bubbles, an effect that’s pretty if hardly original.
Pre-show over, the lights go down and the performers get down: to, presumably, business. The title Empire seems to refer to the Empire State Building; from time to time people parade around the circus ring carrying little models of this and other New York landmarks. The show seems to have its roots in New York — at least it played there for a long time — and it makes occasional reverential mentions of Times Square; this must count as nostalgia since no one is likely to feel sentimental about that location, as currently constituted. Anyway, those moments don’t seem to have any relevance to anything else that’s going on. We merely get a succession of acts from anywhere.
The publicity promises “somersaulting, slapsticking and stripteasing.” The somersaulting parts are the best. They amount to a semi-cirque: that is, they resemble Cirque du Soleil, but without the beauty or the danger. (To be fair, the show isn’t pretentious, either, as Cirque productions sometimes can be.) A trio of intertwining female acrobats is accomplished and inventive, without being spectacular. A man spins hoops around himself. These Empire contortionists are doing things that you or I couldn’t do, but we’ve all seen other performers doing things that these couldn’t do. Or at least don’t do. The slapsticking is best passed over. As for the stripteasing: the only nudity is male, and very brief. The nearest we get to tease is the caged lady early on.
No, I think I tell a lie. There’s an extended scene in which a woman with Dietrich inflections pulls a male spectator onstage, dances with him until declaring that he has no sense of rhythm, then sits him down and vamps him, meanwhile asking personal questions about his sex life. (When she isn’t talking she’s singing, inexplicably, Brother Can You Spare a Dime?) She does take most of her clothes off in the process, and I wondered if she was going to turn out to be a man. She doesn’t; but there’s a coda that I wouldn’t want to spoil, or indeed describe. I thought the whole routine repulsive and demeaning, though I’ll admit the guy on the re-
I long one day to see a victim of audience participation refuse to participate
ceiving end didn’t seem to be objecting. All the same, I long one day to see a victim of audience participation refuse to participate, preferably throwing in a couple of obscenities to make the point. The performers always have the advantage in these scenarios, because they’ve rehearsed. It’s actually bullying.
One routine stands apart from the rest. A male performer slowly and methodically assembles an elaborate contraption of long overlaying bamboo sticks, keeping them together, it seems, by sheer force of willpower. It’s the most Cirque-like of all the acts; indeed I may have seen it before in a Cirque show. In a boring kind of way, it’s hypnotic. It’s probably the most distinguished item in the evening. It’s also the last item, but as a climax it’s an anti-climax, since it bears no relation to anything that has gone before, either in style or in what might charitably be described as substance. It certainly has nothing to do with New York. “Them’s slim pickings under that little old big top.”
Empire runs through Oct. 18 in the Spiegeltent, 318 Queens Quay West