Houston Chronicle Review 1/7/2005

Cirque du Soleil flies high as Icarus crashes to Earth

VAREKAI gets under way as the audience notices a strange, lizardlike creature creeping into sight through the bamboo forest backdrop of the circular stage. Seconds later, another bizarre beast, equally unidentifiable, crawls on from another direction. Before long, the stage is awash with fantastic creatures - sidling, strutting or insinuating themselves into view, some popping up through trap doors amid bursts of steam.

It's an opening every bit as impressive as the procession of animals that launches Julie Taymor's stage version of The Lion King. Cirque du Soleil's latest touring show is a riot of color, energy, imagination and style. Envision a Dr. Seuss fantasy filtered through the worldview of Federico Fellini.

The theme - Icarus' fall to earth in an enchanted forest and his struggle to survive among the fantastic creatures and gypsy tribe - is clear and never forgotten for long.

Writer-director Dominic Champagne gives Varekai unflagging pace and variety. His overall concept is ingenious and uplifting, the stage pictures kept interesting through clever laying of action. Michael Montanaro and Bill Shannon's vivid choreography bursts with the vitality of tribal rites around a campfire, typified by the tremendously athletic Georgian Dance first-act finale.

One of the startling highlights is Anton Chelnokov's initial fall from the sky, wings in disarray. His Icarus then strives to regain the sky in a gorgeous aerial ballet performed in a swath of netting that soars or drops to varying heights.

The dream of flight is a recurring theme. Perhaps the pinnacle is twin brothers Andrew and Kevin Atherton's stunning skydance on the Aerial Straps. They soar in sweeping arcs over the stage, even over the audience, come together, then fly apart again, finally merging high over the stage in a series of symmetrical poses, like one identity reflected in a mirror.

The Russian Swings finale is similarly jaw-dropping, with acrobats launching themselves from enormous swings, landing either in huge sheets of fabric that serve as nets or atop precarious human pyramids.

Icarian Games displays awesome feats of tumbling and acrobatics, as athletes are juggled and tossed on the feet of their colleagues. The breathless Body Skating routine melds tumbling, gymnastics, sliding and airborne antics in an ice ballet sans ice. Four graceful women swing high on their Triple Trapeze.

Those who aren't airborne themselves manipulate objects that are. Master juggler Octavio Alegria brings humor and novelty with pingpong balls juggled by mouth, hats caught atop his head. The Water Meteors trio of agile tots toss and twirl long ropes with lanternlike jugs attached to each end.

Irina Naumenko brings grace, elegance and composure to her blend of ballet, balancing and contortion. Muscular Dergin Tokmak exhibits virtuosity propelling himself on crutches... inspiring Icarus, whose legs were paralyzed in his fall.

Sergiy Marchenko and Gordon White share droll encounters as stern-looking resident clowns. Jordi Deambulants scores sending up an inept magician, delightfully assisted by Joanna Holden as his overeager, accident-prone assistant. She's no kid but has the soul of an eternal ingénue (a very funny notion). Deambulants returns as a hapless lounge singer sabotaged by a shifting spotlight he chases all over the theater; Holden is pivotal to this bit's smart punch line.

One cannot overlook the magical production design: Stéphane Roy's setting of bamboo forest and corkscrewing bridge overhead; Nol Van Genuchten's alternately dappled or dazzling lighting. While costuming always is a strength with Cirque, Eiko Ishioka's incredibly inventive designs here are the troupe's most spectacular yet.

In every department, Varekai delivers a circus of wonders.