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TORONTO -- Having re-invented the circus and then, more recently, having re-invented Las Vegas, Quebec's Cirque du Soleil has now apparently set its sights on re-inventing the stadium rock show.
And maybe this time, they've bitten off more than they can chew.
Delirium, Cirque's "first-ever live arena event" opened a two-night run at the Air Canada Centre last night, less than a month after it premiered to a home-town crowd in Montreal.
And as arena shows go, it is simply spectacular once it moves beyond a rather limp opening act -- a visual banquet of everything Cirque has come to represent.
And sadly, just a little bit less.
For while creators/directors Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon have done a bang-up job of transferring all that is Cirque from the company's blue and yellow Grand Chapiteau to the runway stage that they've run down the length of the Air Canada Centre, they seem to have reconstructed things bass-ackwards as they say.
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For while audiences have become accustomed to Cirque shows that use music as a base on which to build an awe-inspiring show, here the purpose seems to have been the creation of an awe-inspiring show to highlight the music -- in other words, Cirque re-invents the rock concert.
And frankly, with one or two notable exceptions, their brand of techno-pop/world music simply wilts in the subsequent spotlight -- despite the remixing of original compositions from earlier shows by Francis Collard, combined with new (and even comprehensible) lyrics by Robbie Dillon.
Having assembled a fine international band, in the best of Cirque traditions, to back up their usual impressive array of breath-taking acrobats, gymnasts, aerialists, character actors and clowns -- they've put the band out front instead and given them music that all seems pretty much of a muchness.
In some alternate world, good musicians might be able to transform forgettable music into something great, but clearly Cirque has not re-invented that world yet.
So instead, they fall back on a gob-smacking array of technical wizardry that, for a time, almost saves the show.
But in the end, the projections that they throw at their 540 square foot of projection space -- ranging from the awe-inspiring to the utterly delightful, it might be added -- simply can't overcome the often sepulchral effect of the music nor the stately pace it imposes on the proceedings.
If they had thrown in a bit of incense, they could have passed this off as Cirque re-invents high mass -- except mass had usually has better music.
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DELIRIUM
DIRECTOR: MICHEL LEMIEUX AND VICTOR PILON
STARRING: ENSEMBLE
Sun Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5