Theatre in Review: Cirkopolis (Skirball Center)

	Cirkopolis Photo: Valeri Remise

If you enjoy the circus in its more modern manifestations and have grown a little weary of the bombast and overdesign that often plagues Cirque du Soleil's attraction, then Cirkopolis may be just the thing for you. It's the product or Cirque Éloize, yet another Montreal-based troupe, and it shares with Cirque du Soleil a certain penchant for high-concept staging ideas. But staged for the proscenium theatre and with a 90-minute running time, Cirkopolis is much more intimate and fast on its feet.

There's probably nothing that you haven't seen before, although the acts continue to amaze. One acrobat performs handstands on the hand of a colleague. A woman named Angelica Bongiovanni inserts herself into the cyr wheel, a giant hula hoop, becoming a kind of human gyroscope. A team of jugglers toss pins about in astonishing intricate combinations. A team of men bring new changes to the idea of the German wheel, hopping on and off of the enormous circular metal structure. Other performers do amazing things with a vertical bar, a hanging rope, and a pair of flying straps. Perhaps most appropriately, the biggest rounds of applause went to Yann LeBlanc, a specialist in the diabolo, a spool that gets juggled with a rope, to amazing effect.

All of this is accompanied by a somewhat bewildering production bookended by scenes of office drudges going through their paper-pushing ways. And the action is fairly continually backed by imagery of a floating steampunk metropolis. The projections, by Robert Massicotte and Alexis Laurence, are very impressive, but what they have to do with the acts of this talented troupe are beyond me. At least, the clown figure, Ashley Carr, is genuinely amusing at times.

The rest of the design credits, including Liz Vandal's costumes and Nicolas Descôteaux's lighting, are perfectly fine. No sound designer is credited, but there is solid reinforcement for Stéfan Boucher's score, which ranges from portentous chords to melancholy piano melodies to unfettered swing arrangements.

When it comes to these circus entertainments, I sometimes feel I have seen it all, but there's no doubt that Cirkopolis has found a way of delivering its astonisments in a very easy-to-take package. The audience at my performance had many children in it and for good reason. This is a perfectly good alternative to more aggressively tinselly holiday entertainments. --David Barbour