Resorting to the video screens to run pre-recorded footage in "real world" looking places seemed lame to me and was a jarring contrast that I felt didn't really fit. The parts that had him in the dressing room that was sort of nested into the back of the stage seemed odd too because you could only really see in clearly from a center seat which the vast majority in the tent, aren't
That kind of stuff just felt like poor design and direction to me for a show made by a company who wrote the book on how to do these kinds of things "in the round".
I'd be lying if I said I was a fan of the whole Quid Pro Quo aspect and how that was done, too... And the guy playing with his butt as the "clown" segment... just seemed kind of trashy to me. The fact that he even stops at one point and is like "Cirque du Soleil!" as if to say "yes, you're really seeing this as an act in a Cirque show" in a meta way (which
did get a laugh) seemed really telling.
Sounds like the overall arching story spoke to you personally which I can apprecaite but there were just so many aspects of the show that felt either amateurish, garish and uncouth or just not as impressive as some of their other shows (the big bike act at the end felt like it would have been a mid-act in a lot of their other shows and I kind of walked out thinking "that's it?")
Personally, I thought the choreography, set design and individual acts for Crystal were better. I was also impressed with their ability to create a show like this on Ice and with the way they used projection mapping for parts of it in a very organic way.
I was leery going in because I've not been too impressed with any of their arena shows that I've seen and maybe the novelty of it being on ice but not "Disney-on-ice" style gave it extra marks for me.
That said, I'll grant there were parts that felt derivative of other Cirque shows (I felt like this one cribbed a lot from Quidam story-wise) but after seeing a certain number of them, you start to see things that I like to call "stock" Cirque in just about all of the shows, to some degree.
The actual overarching story in these is always a little abstract (some more so than others) so I tend to not judge the show as heavily on that aspect but if one really hit me hard there, I could see feeling more strongly about it. That may be part of why we have differing opinions, here.
I agree, it
is fun to discuss all of this, though!
As for us hijacking the thread I have two things to say:
• It's a thread about a Cirque show and we're still talking about Cirque shows so we're still more on-topic than 95% of the meandering conversation in just about any other thread and...
• Unlike when everyone goes off on tangents in other threads, we're all disagreeing but in a completely and totally respectful way this time!
Seriously, this should be a model of the
right way to derail a thread around here, don't you think?
The story was so empowering, the stage design literally out of this world, and I could gush about the soundtrack for eternity. Now compared to Crystal, which I saw just a few months after VOLTA, that was a dud. It was pretty much the same story as VOLTA but less empowering with just mediocrity spilled everywhere. I'm sorry to everyone else on the forum that we've hijacked this thread with Cirque talk. But Cirque du Soleil fans are such a niche fan base, it is such fun to discuss it with others since there really isn't a dedicated space.
