That was basically what I assumed every incarnation of Cirque de Soleil would be like, only with Chinese opera house survivors, general clowning, and spandexed units sprinkled in. And you know what? I wish that's what I ended up seeing on Wednesday night.
Instead, I saw some kids' show with huge dog puppets and French Canadians phoning it in. Wintuk, Cirque de Soleil's winter show, centered around some annoying kid who looked like this.
That was their first mistake. He whined the whole two hours about wanting to see snow. This was apparently the crux of the narrative since the little brat kept braying "I WANNA SEE IT SNOW" every fifteen minutes. It has become my new catch phrase for when I want to be completely unlovable and push others away. Feel free to steal it. I'd like to see it make a 360.
So, this kid starts off in some sort of urban scenes where a bunch of white kids with dreads and lots of colorful layers do all sorts of EXTREME sports and generally do the Dew. I kid you not when I tell you there was an EXTREME JUMP ROPE ROUTINE.
After the kid sleeps in the park overnight unmolested, he bitches to the lamp posts (they're urban ents, complete with eyelashes) that, you guessed it, he wants to see it snow. Naturally, huge dog puppets emerge and after he dicks around with them, a very large black woman wearing a cloak of spoons emerges from under a bridge. Apparently, large, homeless black women have nothing more to do than assist white kids and their whims, because she happens to be his magical ticket to seeing snow. Turns out she's not just a homeless woman, but a shaman, an ethereal go-between to another world. Another world where it snows.
Reader, I do not lie when I tell you this large, black homeless woman wearing a coat of spoons literally rides a garbage can-sled to cart this brat to the magical land of Wintuk.
Why all the fuss? Why not just give the kid a bus ticket to the magical land of Buffalo? Well, does Buffalo have incredibly limber Eastern Europeans with mad rhythmic gymnastics skills? 'Nuff said.
I have to give it to Wintuk. It is amusing to be in the middle of what you think is a children's show only to have a series of limber, lithe Slavic beauties gyrating in spandex and spreading their legs out as far as possible.
One of the performers did a whole routine where she was this toy/half-dead-fuckdoll being flung around the stage in various positions by two other men. Which leads me to this question - how does one figure out that they are good at playing an inanimate object?
You know what? I'm upset that I've dedicated this much time to the topic. Just don't say you haven't been warned.
Labels: French-Canadians, Really?, stank, wrongness, WTF
