“OVO” – Guide and Founder – Guy Laliberté. Artistic Guide – Gilles Ste-Croix. Writer, Director and Choreographer – Deborah Colker. Costume Design by Liz Vandal. Set Design by Designer Gringo Cardia. Musical Composition and Direction by Berna Ceppas. Lighting Design by Éric Champoux. Presented by Cirque de Soleil at Agganis Arena, 925 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA. Run has ended.
By Shelley A. Sackett
“How did they do that?” exclaimed my companion with all the amazement and awe of a seven-year-old as a cluster of red-clad creatures slid down poles horizontally and screeched to a halt inches above the floor.
Whether seven or seventy-seven, the artistic magic and athletic showmanship of a Cirque de Soleil performance never gets stale.
This year’s show, OVO (Portuguese for “egg”), takes us on a magical mystery tour into the secret world of insects, where crickets, ladybugs, and spiders live inside a colorful and chaotic world. Crickets chirp nonstop. The music is whimsical, and the sets are as fabulous and creative as the costumes. There are trampolines, climbing walls, and enormous monitors that screen vibrant close-ups of nature and psychedelia.
And then there are the amazing acrobatic acts, which stretch the imagination and defy the human body’s normal physical limitations.
Ovo‘s creator and director, Deborah Colker, took inspiration from the world of insects. The idea for OVO was not to be about the acts, dancing, or insects but about movement. The movement of life permeates the entire show, with creatures flying, leaping, bounding, and crawling.
All Cirque de Soleil shows have underlying stories. OVO takes place in the teeming, creepy crawling world of the insect world, where critters eat, play, flirt, squabble, and horse around. The nonstop action and vitality are a riotous world of energy, emotion, and chatter.
A mysterious, quirky insect arrives in this microcosm carrying a mysterious egg. The community gathers around it, curious and a little intimidated. A ladybug catches the newcomer’s eye, and he quickly takes his eye off the egg as he pursues his new love.
Eventually, the mystery of the egg and its symbolic representation of the cycles of life, death, and rebirth are revealed.
The meat of the evening, however, is in the acrobatic performances. A performer high above the stage emerges from a cocoon as a butterfly and flies away. Acrobat “crickets” bounce between a trampoline and a rock wall in frenetic leaps and bounds. A seemingly jointless spider weaves a mysterious web.
There are even nightclub-esque singing numbers, on-stage live musicians, and audience participation numbers. These are more annoying and distracting than entertaining for the true Cirque fan and feel like additions meant to pad the show and run out the clock. The techno beat starts to grate, and the ladybug shtick gets very old very quickly. Even the kids in the audience grew fidgety, especially in Act II.
This reviewer would have preferred a shorter, intermission-less show with more meat and less filler.
Although not the most thrilling or satisfying Cirque de Soleil, OVO’s originality, grace, and world-class international talent is nonetheless as astonishing as always. If you can’t be at the Olympics, this might just be the next best thing.
