Varekai

Quebec-based Cirque du Soleil's high-concept, animal-free circus has achieved the sort of arty snob appeal that can allow the set designer, Stéphane Roy, to come up with nonstatements such as this: "In circus, design is essentially the choice of the spatial context that the artists must inhabit." Yeah, no kidding -- in circus and in everything else, Stéphane! Well, never mind. Cirque du Soleil puts on a fabulous show. "Varekai" is the Romany word for "wherever," and although the show starts with an Icarus-like fall of a winged man, or soul, into a mysterious forest, or primeval swamp, it doesn't have much of a story and amounts to nothing more than a tremendous spectacle of world-class acrobatics. Anton Chelnokov, as the winged man, does a heart-stopping sequence using a dangling net, from which he twists and swings the way lesser mortals swing from trapezes. A group of acrobats hurl themselves from swinging platforms. Clowns perform fake magic with a member of the audience (for comic relief), and "aerial strap artists" Andrew and Kevin Atherton strike balletic poses as they swing perilously overhead, like a couple of gay Tarzans. The contortionist Olga Pikhienko also performs a sinuous ballet near the end of the show, as Icarus' romantic interest, in a sort of wedding scene. The concept seems awfully high and thin this time around, but Cirque du Soleil is still one of the continent's best purveyors of circus.