Cirque du Soleil's Varekai at the Royal Albert Hall
February 21st 2008 20:34
I’d read the history. I’d made a slow circle of the building and marveled from the pavement at its splendid façade and magnificent dome. I’d read its inscriptions and studied its friezes from the paths of Hyde Park. I’d snapped the photos. Now it was time to step inside the Royal Albert Hall and see the show.
Varekai, in the Romany language, means ‘wherever’ and Varekai, Cirque du Soleil’s 14th show aims to inspire its spectators and take them on a voyage through adversity, courage and brotherhood to “wherever”. For me Varekai did not fall short of its intention. It was an amazing journey into a surreal realm filled with brilliant light and colour, hauntingly beautiful sound and peopled with magical, storybook creatures.
The music was a weave of sounds with strong elements of the opera, hints of the acclesiastical, a drop of the electronic, traces of classic circus tunes and an unforgettable measure of Jaques Brel’s Ne Me Quitte Pas, curiously but hilariously worked into a clown routine. The set was simple – a forest of tall slim gold cylinders – a background which took nothing away from the colour and the movement of the spectacle. The costumes were brilliant, transforming people into wild fantastic things with bizarre shapes and strange hues. And the Cirque du Soleil family, many of them former Olympic gymnasts, took human movement and dexterity beyond the imaginable.
The small central stage was the circus ring where clowns, singers and actors strutted their stuff and where jugglers and contortionists executed breathtaking feats. The great oval space of the Albert Hall was the big top. Trapeze artists dropped down and swung perilously below the dome. They soared upwards into the vertical space above the stage, past the gilded cream balconies and crimson-curtained boxes. They leapt and somersaulted across the raked rows of seating in the stalls.
Varekai was, as the Cirque du Soleil publicity promised, "a quest, an adventure and a voyage" to an extraordinary “wherever”. To see this fabulous spectacle, this world of unbelievable talent and exceptional imagination, set against the magnificent backdrop of the Royal Albert Hall, itself a work of great skill and creativity and an enduring piece of another world from another age, was a truly amazing experience
Inside the Royal Albert Hall
Varekai, in the Romany language, means ‘wherever’ and Varekai, Cirque du Soleil’s 14th show aims to inspire its spectators and take them on a voyage through adversity, courage and brotherhood to “wherever”. For me Varekai did not fall short of its intention. It was an amazing journey into a surreal realm filled with brilliant light and colour, hauntingly beautiful sound and peopled with magical, storybook creatures.
The music was a weave of sounds with strong elements of the opera, hints of the acclesiastical, a drop of the electronic, traces of classic circus tunes and an unforgettable measure of Jaques Brel’s Ne Me Quitte Pas, curiously but hilariously worked into a clown routine. The set was simple – a forest of tall slim gold cylinders – a background which took nothing away from the colour and the movement of the spectacle. The costumes were brilliant, transforming people into wild fantastic things with bizarre shapes and strange hues. And the Cirque du Soleil family, many of them former Olympic gymnasts, took human movement and dexterity beyond the imaginable.
The small central stage was the circus ring where clowns, singers and actors strutted their stuff and where jugglers and contortionists executed breathtaking feats. The great oval space of the Albert Hall was the big top. Trapeze artists dropped down and swung perilously below the dome. They soared upwards into the vertical space above the stage, past the gilded cream balconies and crimson-curtained boxes. They leapt and somersaulted across the raked rows of seating in the stalls.
Varekai was, as the Cirque du Soleil publicity promised, "a quest, an adventure and a voyage" to an extraordinary “wherever”. To see this fabulous spectacle, this world of unbelievable talent and exceptional imagination, set against the magnificent backdrop of the Royal Albert Hall, itself a work of great skill and creativity and an enduring piece of another world from another age, was a truly amazing experience
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