Paramour
Opening Night: May 25, 2016
Closing: April 16, 2017
Theater: Lyric Theatre
“Paramour” unites Cirque du Soleil’s signature spectacle with Broadway’s story-telling. Set in the world of Golden Age Hollywood, the event will spin the tale of a beautiful young poet forced to choose between love and art.
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May 25, 2016
About 45 minutes into Paramour, the Cirque du Soleil musical that opens at Broadway’s Lyric Theatre tonight, the twin aerialists Andrew and Kevin Atherton are suspended over a stage set of what’s supposed to be a movie set of Ancient Egypt. They’re a striking pair: platinum blond, lantern-jawed, impossibly toned, and mirror images, each hanging from a strap and effortlessly contorting himself, dozens of feet above the stage. It’s the sort of breathtaking, beautiful athleticism you expect from Cirque du Soleil, and it’s thrilling. The audience is rapt. At the end of their number, the Atherton twins get the evening’s biggest applause.
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May 25, 2016
“Paramour,” Cirque du Soleil’s attempt to merge its gravity-defying spectacle with a traditional song-and-story musical, definitely has the best trampoline-powered rooftop chase scene ever turned into a Broadway finale. And the flying, in the same cavernous theater where “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” made its aerial and financial belly flops, easily puts hapless Spidey to shame. But the multinational giant behind this $25-million experiment already knows its people can do quadruple flying flips off a seesaw springboard. Director Philippe Decouflé and creative director Jean-François Bouchard will not be surprised to learn that the blond shirtless twins who soar over half the orchestra with just wrist ropes and sinew are at least as astonishing as the men who do splits while sticking high onto the light poles with no visible means of support.
READ THE REVIEWMay 25, 2016
The first signal you get that “Paramour” is no ordinary Broadway show is the size of the playbill. It’s a monster, easily dwarfing the regular booklets you get handed at every other theater. That makes sense. “Paramour” wants to be different, outsized and brash. It’s the first Cirque du Soleil show created specifically for Broadway, harnessing its muscular gravity-avoiding acrobats to musical theater. The result, which opened Wednesday at the Lyric Theatre, is sometimes overstuffed and awkward but always finds its footing when it highlights its soaring, rubber-bodied stars.
READ THE REVIEWMay 25, 2016
When Cirque du Soleil first appeared here in 1988 with its now-familiar brand of animal-free circus arts, which grew from a Quebec troupe of street performers, it played a specially set up big top with bleacher seating in lower Manhattan. That presentation, with its arch and arty mix of acrobatics and twee clowning, gave off an artificial air suggesting Picasso aesthetics rendered in polyester.
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May 25, 2016
Pity the poor chanteuse. Flame-haired, beautiful and buxom, clad in a spangly dress and draped seductively against a piano, she’s singing her heart out, pouring her soul into a song about … er, something. Love? Loss? Her favorite nail salon? Hard to remember, because while she was doing all that heartfelt warbling, the patrons in the speakeasy where she was performing were bouncing around the room like tennis balls, or rolling around on skates, or contorting themselves into peculiar poses on their tables. A few particularly enterprising folks were even swinging from the light fixtures. It was difficult to focus on the song when the room resembled a pinball machine heading toward tilt. Welcome to “Paramour,” or as I like to call it, “A.D.H.D.! The Musical.”
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