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NEW YORK TIMES CIRQUE DREAMS: JUNGLE FANTASY REVIEW
Feats of Death- Defying Spandex
by Charles Isherwood
“Cirque Dreams,” a stunts-and-spandex spectacular that opened Thursday night at the Broadway Theater, is ideally suited for children ages 6 to 12 with an advanced interest in either jungle fauna, gymnastics or sequins. If your child has a passion for all three, by all means waste no shekels on tickets for “The Lion King.” This is the show for you.
The production was created and directed by Neil Goldberg, who is not French-Canadian. I thus make it clear up front that “Cirque Dreams” is not associated with Cirque du Soleil, the megacompany from up north that has been minting money in the nouveau-circus business for years. Mr. Goldberg has been using a variation on the same formula for more than a decade himself; this is his latest in a series of touring “Cirque” attractions.
Subtitled “Jungle Fantasy,” the production deploys its well-drilled army of aerialists, contortionists, jugglers and gymnasts around a slender vine of story. Marcello Balestracci, an energetic young fellow with a winning smile and despair-inducing abs, portrays the Adventurer, who heads into the jungle for a jumble of athletic encounters with the wildlife therein. (Giraffes in the jungle? Well, never mind.) Assisting him on his journey is Jill Diane, the show’s slinky ringmistress, in the guise of Mother Nature.
Ms. Diane’s elaborate getup is quite a grabber. At some point during her planet-supervising chores, Mother Nature appears to have had a fruitful confab with Bob Mackie. Her headdress is a souped-up variation on the flowery rubber bathing cap Grandma used to wear to do the slo-mo breast stroke in the pool. The glittery, midriff-baring sheath is purest Cher. Affixed to Mother Nature’s lower back is something resembling a wall sconce from the baroque collection at Restoration Hardware. (Discontinued, I believe.) There is also a feathered train.
I must admit that the fascination of this ensemble never palled for me. And it proved useful in distracting me from the songs Ms. Diane was singing, most of which featured lyrics (by Jill Winters) of wince-making inanity. (One sees at last the point of the apparently imaginary languages used in the Cirque du Soleil shows.) Ms. Winters and a host of other composers provided the upbeat, thumpy electronic score, although most of it sounds like it could have been burned right off a CD titled “Ibiza Gay Fun Disco Party 2.”
Tastefulness, obviously, is not among the pronounced assets of “Cirque Dreams.” But the show’s low-tech simplicity is endearing, and a nice contrast to the hydraulics-heavy Las Vegas extravaganzas of Cirque du Soleil. (There’s just one set, a fanciful jungle landscape by Jon Craine, abloom in vines and mushrooms. In the second act, set at night, everything goes Day-Glo.)
The acts are sometimes standard, sometimes inspired variations on acrobatics and aerial gymnastics, juggling and balancing and limb twisting. They are performed with the usual daredevil panache and ouch-that-must-kill elasticity by the assembled international hordes. (Most are from Russia, Ukraine and Mongolia. Are there job fairs over there for these kinds of shows?) One of the most enjoyable sequences, believe it or not, was the frisky opening festival of jump-rope. One of the strangest was the “Blackbird Hairialist,” a woman who performs a series of airborne spinning feats while hanging from her ponytail. This does not look like fun, although it could offer a cheap alternative to a facelift.
The cheery presence of Mr. Balestracci, who jumps in and out of some acts and assists in others, provides a nice through-line. The children scattered throughout the audience seemed to be having a good time. Meanwhile you could practically see the little thought bubbles above the heads of many of the adults in the audience: “I must get back to the gym.”
CIRQUE DREAMS JUNGLE FANTASY
Music and lyrics by Jill Winters; created and directed by Neil Goldberg; choreography by Tara Jeanne Vallee; costumes by Cirque Productions, Lenora Taylor and Santiago Rojo; additional music by David Scott, Keith Heffner, Billy Paul Williams, Tony Aliperti, Lance Conque and Christopher Pati; act design by Mr. Goldberg, Heather Hoffman and Iouri Klepatsky; sets by Jon Craine; lighting by Kate Johnston; sound by Craig Cassidy; executive producers, James Geisler and Alan Wasser and Allan Williams; animal sculpture design by William Olson; production design by Betsy Herst; production manager, Juniper Street Productions. Presented by A+ Theatricals, Broadway Across America, Cirque Productions, Adam Troy Epstein, Fox Associates, New Space Entertainment, Albert Nocciolino, Providence Performing Arts Center and Theater League. At the Broadway Theater, 1681 Broadway; (212) 239-6200. Through Aug. 24. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes.
WITH: Uranmandakh Amarsanaa, Marcello Balestracci, Jared Burnett, Zachary Carroll, Jill Diane, Lauren Diblasi, Ruslan Dmytruk, Iryna Dmytruk, Ivan Dotsenko, Vladimir Dovgan, Nataliya Egorova, Judah Frank, Buyankhishig Ganbaatar, Erdenesuvd Ganbaatar, Stefka Iordanova, Denys Kucher, Vitalii Lykov, Lee Miller, Odgerel Oyunbaatar, Sergey Parshin, Pavel Pozdnyakov, Glenn Rogers, Naomi Sampson, Konstantin Serov, Carly Sheridan, Serguei Slavski, Alexander Tolstikov and Anatoliy Yeniy.
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