Palm Beach Spectacle: Cirque Dreams @ The Moore
Cirque Dreams @ The Moore Theatre
Sat 2pm & 8pm, Sun 2pm // Ticketmaster $29-$49 (plus fees)
Who doesn't love a circus? Maybe dead people. They might not like the hustle and bustle. The guy next to us was in his forties, in a suit, and kept pointing out things to his date, exclaiming, "Oh, no way!" Most of the rest of the audience was pre-teen or just-teen. We developed a strange craving for elephant ears, but none were to be had.
Neil Goldberg is the man behind Cirque Dreams -- his background is in scenic design and he lives in south Florida and his "Jungle Fantasy" clues you in on that with ultraviolet light and violently colorful prints on Cats-y body suits. The set's jungle trees mimic human shapes, clasped forearms, twining bodies. In the second half of the 90-minute show, a black-lighted night-time jungle -- festooned with glowing mushrooms -- springs to rod-and-cone vibrating life. Circuses are not festivals of good taste.
There's a singing MC, a ladybug we think, who once performed Chicago somewhere -- her "vox was buried in the mix," as our three-year-old nephew likes to say. There's a tall, zero-percent body-fat electric violin player called Soul Tree. And then there are the Chinese contortionists, trapeze artists, Ukrainian strong men, balancers, acrobatic clowns, and those people who wrap their arms in silk streamers and fly around. What are those people called? We meant to ask the performers who came out and chatted and stood for photos in the lobby afterwards.
You may not know that F. Scott Fitzgerald went around trying on his "different from you and me" line everywhere: "Circus people are different from you and me" is one less-known variant. They are, in fact. You could not do this. We watched the contortionists in a sweaty wash of horror, anticipating the grating crumple of a spinal column giving way. The trapeze artists had a knack of letting themselves slip free in routines, then lock into place, hands grasped, just at the time the theater sucked in its breath. The kids loved it, we just wanted them to get down from there before someone got hurt.
"I expected more carny," said our friend, who was less enthused about the jungle theater metaphor -- and it is hard to explain why two geometrically-suited men would be balancing on tables on a rolling cylinder in the jungle -- "but then that's a general cultural critique." We were a little let down by the final, strong men's act, "Roar," although we loved that they were firepluggy Ukrainians and watching them stalk around like lions with hands arched into claws might make you cry, thinking about the mighty Ukraine, its past and present. Circuses do that to us, take us back. However dressed up, a circus is these ageless, gaudy, strenuous, unnerving people: exactly what we were hoping to see. [Video/more photos here.]
