Cirque du Soleil's Corteo, Royal Albert Hall Review
Corteo production image. Photo by Andrew Paradise
Written by Franco Milazzo for Theatre and Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review
With a show that could turn any frown upside down, Cirque du Soleil rolled back into the Royal Albert Hall with their 2005 creation Corteo. The title is Italian for procession or cortège and is a nod to the high-level concept here: the recently deceased Mauro the Dreamer Clown looks down from the rafters as his passing is marked with a circus carnival by his friends.
The company have been coming to this West London venue for decades but, even for those who have grown tired of their previous efforts here, this year’s show has several special features, not least the setting. For the first time, the hall has been divided into two by a stage which stretches all the way across. There’s a small band in one corner and concentric revolving circles in the middle allowing the ground-based acts to be slowly spun around while they perform.
Another key difference is how the clowns are portrayed. They are normally squeaky, bland characters who are there to fill in between the more spectacular acts. This time around, they are front and foremost. A giant clown stomps around while a tiny one called Clowness floats around the place over the audience and up into the gods. They are entertaining as all hell for once.
Corteo isn’t a new show by any means but it is still a highlight in Cirque du Soleil’s portfolio. There’s a deliberate attempt to create a fun atmosphere with acrobats bouncing off trampoline-like beds, hanging off chandeliers and flipping in mid-air off teeterboards. There’s barely a lull in the whole show with only a couple of technical errors seen on press night.
The storyline is slight and slightly confusing. It’s unclear from the synopsis or the onstage antics whether Mauro is consciously imagining everything going on below (in which case he is presumably imagining the angels alongside him too who are looking down) or whether everything (angels and all) are real to Mauro. That doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things: while grief takes many forms, some of the sequences could have been flown in from any Cirque du Soleil show while others only have a tangential allusion to the overall concept.
A word of warning: those in the ringside seats may end up with cricks in their neck as they gaze up and down to follow the high-flying action while the flat sightlines mean that some ground-based skits (like a vaguely amusing golf sequence with a human ball) may be hard to see properly.
Some would say that, when one is tired of Cirque du Soleil, one is tired of circus. That’s not quite true as this company represents only one example of this lively art form. London audiences can look forward to other incredibly fun circus shows, not least the all-male comedy Godz, Come Alive! based on The Greatest Showman film and the annual cabaret fest that is La Clique. None of them are on the scale of Corteo but there has always been enough space in the big top for more than one spectacle.
Corteo continues at the Royal Albert Hall until 2 March.
★ ★ ★ ★
