TORUK-THE FIRST FLIGHT – A REVIEW
BY: BRENDAN KELLY, MONTREAL GAZETTE
The Cirque du Soleil’s new touring arena show Toruk – The First Flight, which had its world premiere Monday night at the Bell Centre, is chock full of stunning visuals, stirring choreography and maybe the most eye-popping set ever seen at the Habs rink. There are many pleasure to be had.
The story, sadly, is not quite as captivating. It is inspired by Canadian filmmaker James Cameron’s blockbuster hit Avatar and like that movie, it is set on the faraway moon named Pandora. But it’s a prequel, taking place some 3,000 years before the action portrayed in the film.
As promised, this is indeed the most narrative show the absurdly popular Montreal circus has ever delivered. For the first time ever, the Cirque has a narrator on stage and The Storyteller, played by Montreal actor Sébastien Dodge, delivers a recap of the action every few minutes. In fact, the use of a real language is also a first for the Cirque. Dodge speaks in French for the Montreal run, though there are two shows with English narration (Dec. 23 and Dec. 28). Toruk heads out on a tour across North America after the Bell Centre run and naturally the narration for the other dates, other than in Quebec City, will be in the language of Shakespeare.
While we’re on the subject of the Bard, let’s just say that the writing here is a notch or two below Shakespeare’s wordplay. I know, I know, it’s unfair to compare most anyone to the world’s most famous playwright but the fact is that the writing here just quite literally brings the Cirque back down to Earth.
Until now, the Cirque shows always had the loosest most threadbare of stories and we never cared because we were having so much fun soaking up the dazzling acrobatic acts and the Cirque’s innovative oh-so-Québécois blend of avant-garde theatre, modern dance and bopping world-music.
There is little of that classic Cirque fare in Toruk. Yes there’s dance and music, much of it quite beautiful, but don’t go expecting the kind of show-stopping high-wire acts that have been the outfit’s calling card since the very beginning.
Now the story is front-and-centre, written by co-directors Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon, with the help of playwright Olivier Kemeid. And how do I put this politely? Well let’s just say it doesn’t bear careful scrutiny.
At the start, there’s a giant volcanic eruption on Pandora and it looks like the sacred Tree of Souls is to be destroyed. That’s when two Na’vi teens, Ralu (Gabriel Christo) and Entu (Guillaume Paquin), best buds since childhood, decide they will be heroes and go seek out the Toruk, a giant predator of the skies, to save Pandora. Along the way they will hook up with a young woman Tsyal (Giulia Piolanti) who is initially reluctant to join the trek but eventually returns in a canoe to pick them up and continue on towards Toruk.
There is also much dialogue between the three of them in Na’vi, the language made up for the film, and the performers have microphones, also novel for the Cirque.
The show kicks off in high style with a highly-charged sequence powered by the energetic percussion work of Daudet Fabrice Grazai but it’s really in the second act that you begin to fully appreciate the handiwork of Lemieux and Pilon who have crafted an astonishing multi-media spectacle using 40 video projectors that showcase the visuals on a 20,000-square-foot surface. There’s a tremendous moment when visuals of waves wash through the crowd and then crash on to the set.
And those same projectors create one stunning visual tableau after one, in effect producing a new decor for each scene. Lemieux and Pilon have spent the past couple of decades dreaming up wonderful shows that mix every media imaginable, some with the Cirque, many in other settings, and so it’s no surprise that the real force of the show is that heady blend of visual flair and poetic stage smarts that’s always been their trademark.
Set designer Carl Fillion has done a magnificent job of re-creating Pandora with a set that takes up almost the entire ice surface, anchored by the giant Omaticaya Home Tree and a rock island jutting up from the ground. Then there are Patrick Martel’s giant puppets, these strange surreal creatures operated by puppeteers usually in full view, or in the case of the Direhorses, with two guys inside the horse puppet, with their legs standing in for the horse’s legs. I couldn’t help thinking it was a little like that genius moment in Monty Python and The Holy Grail when the guys are pretending to be horses and making the horse-clopping sound by banging together coconuts.
There’s also a bunch of kite sequences that are like nothing you’ve ever seen before. You just don’t normally think of choreographing the motion of kites and it somehow works. In other words, kudos to choreographers Tuan Le and Tan Loc.
And hats off to Lemieux and Pilon for creating this visual feast. No one does awesome sound-and-light show like these Montreal hipsters.
But where was the story editor? Where was the voice of reason to step in and tell the Cirque creative team – hang on a second, this text simply isn’t strong enough to use as the foundation of a two-hour show and, more to the point, much of it doesn’t even really make sense. Like what is it with the sacred objects the three teens are searching for? If you know what that’s all about, let me know.
{ SOURCE: Montreal Gazette | http://goo.gl/AM2BKq }
