CIRQUE REVIEW:
TOTEM
14 AUG/11

JOHN COULBOURN,
QMI Agency
R: 4/5

TORONTO - There’s a new Cirque in town, and it’s got Lepage’s fingerprints all over it. That’s Cirque, as in Cirque du Soleil, the international circus juggernaut that rolled out of Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec in the early ’80s, set on selling its own unique vision of circus entertainment to the world. And that’s Lepage, as in Robert Lepage, the Quebec-based visionary whose imagination has turned modern theatres into houses of wonder, returning to the Cirque fold on the heels of a successful collaboration in 2004 titled KA.

This time out, they have come together to create TOTEM — and for those still considering a trip down to the Port Lands off Cherry Street, where TOTEM opened last week under the Grande Chapiteau, perhaps what you most need to know is that it aims at nothing less than telling the story of the evolution of mankind.

Of course, it is full of trademark Cirque moments, courtesy of daring young men (and women) on flying trapezes, Russian bars and unicycles, with a coterie of jugglers, acrobats, dancers and, of course, clowns (a rather lacklustre bunch, this time out) thrown in for good measure. It is also full of Lepage magic, certain to take one’s breath away and underscore the fact that he is engaged in, and pivotal to, the continual re-evaluation and evolution of the furthest boundaries of theatrical possibility. In the twinkling of an eye, stages morph from tidal pools to lava-spitting volcanos and performers swim through solid stages and water-ski on dry land, before inevitably setting off to explore the boundaries of outer space.

In short, it is everything one might expect from a union of two of la belle province’s best known artistic treasures — everything, and sadly, just a little bit less. For while TOTEM is filled with those edge-of-your-seat moments we all expect from the Cirque experience, and loaded with the kind of magical theatrical effects we’ve come to expect of the Lepage experience, the two elements never really fuse into a single show.

So, while it is perfectly possible, even highly likely, that you are going to find yourself lost in the simple elegance of Lepage’s creativity, chances are the circus act to which it is building will pull you out of that hard-won theatrical moment and leave you scrambling to catch up with this latest big-top diversion. And while you’re equally as likely to find yourself lost in the romantic wonder of, say, the fixed trapeze duo billing, cooing and quarrelling while suspended in mid-air, expect to be pulled out of whatever reveries their artistry might inspire by some new and compelling effect Lepage and his design team have cooked up.

But while TOTEM fails to coalesce into the perfect union of Cirque and theatre one might have expected, there remains much to recommend the experience, once it emerges from the primordial ooze and starts to dazzle with a bar routine set inside a giant carapace that evokes both the shell of a turtle (central to many First Nation’s beliefs on the origin of man) and the longhouse which played such a pivotal role in their culture.

From there, using an array of often breathtaking costumes designed by Kym Barrett to evoke evolving life-forms and cultures, mixing in the sets and props of Carl Fillion and the lighting of Étienne Boucher, mixed with the dazzling projections of Pedro Pires to highlight the acts, it offers everything we’ve come to expect from a Cirque show. And though there are moments where Lepage’s genius and the Cirque-inspired spectacle come together to underscore the possibilities of their union, one is left finally wanting both a whole lot more from it and on occasion, even just a little bit less.