Cirque du Soleil gets the royal seal of approval
Most of us are inclined to want to hunker down under our duvets at this time of year. So extra points must go to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for heading out into the January night and rolling up to the circus. Their attendance at Cirque du Soleil’s Totem last night has got the theatrical year off to a glamorous start.
What with Meghan taking over as the royal patron of the National Theatre – and bringing to that role all her passion as an erstwhile actress – this vital part of our cultural sector has received a well-timed fillip. You could describe their smiling presence at the Royal Albert Hall yesterday as totemic.
By neat coincidence, Prince Harry was born the same year – 1984 – that Cirque du Soleil achieved lift-off in Quebec. Since then, it has grown into an entertainment colossus, with an estimated total audience to date of more than 90 million.
Its corporate slickness is not to everybody’s taste. Despite the involvement of visionary Canadian director Robert Lepage, Totem got short shrift from some when it opened here in 2011
– the Telegraph’s then critic Charles Spencer dismissing it as “more of the same old, same old”.
Granted, the evening doesn’t rank as Cirque at its best, and it stands guilty of some of its worse recurrent features: there’s a grandiose, slightly inchoate theme (here, the evolution of man), clowning that barely raises a titter, and a gloop of world music that’s in one ear, out the other. To these shortcomings may now be added worries about authenticity and appropriation.
Last year, Lepage was forced to suspend a show, Kanata, about the early history of Canada after he was criticised by members of Quebec’s indigenous communities for his lack of consultation.
If people wanted to get hot under the collar about Totem, they could; the title alludes to the totems of Canada’s “First Nations”, and the show displays a broad brushstroke approach to tribal custom: there’s much ritualistic thrashing to pounding drums at the start, a fiery glow lighting up the inside of a giant turtle skeleton, and a Native American hoop dance, the costumes for which aren’t, according to the programme notes, “an accurate portrayal of any one culture”. It seems to me, though, that there’s a generosity and quirkiness of spirit here – celebrating the wonder of life on Earth in a David Attenborough-y way – that ensures the show successfully walks the tightrope over bubbling qualms. Overall, the spectacle boasts a sparkle to match the crowd-wowing Meghan and the kind of physical feats fit for a rugged, Army-trained prince.
Frog and fishlike beings spring and swing at the start, hymning the human physique while evoking an amphibian emergence from the swamp (there’s a beautiful, much-metamorphosing lagoon area at the rear). Hunks in trunks spin at terrifying speed and perilous altitudes from the stage, gripping rope-handles. A female quintet in tutus on towering unicycles defy belief as they coordinate fixed smiles, synchronised pedalling and the foot-flipping (and head-catching) of multiple metal bowls.
There’s plenty more where that came from – more than a dozen finessed tableaux in all – capped by some vertiginous somersaulting on the back of hand-held poles. The pearl in the diadem, though, is a roller-skating duo who spin in a breakneck fashion on a podium, like a superfast speed date, before calmly (and oh so romantically) heading off in a canoe, surrounded by lake mist – just perfect for newlyweds.