Friday, August 08, 2003 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

A New Direction

'Zumanity' shifts Cirque du Soleil style from dreamlike to cabaret

Marcela de la Vega Luna is one of the performers lending an exotic flair to "Zumanity," the Cirque du Soleil show exploring themes of desire in a specially designed theater that attempts to redefine the cabaret show. COURTESY PHOTO The Botero Sisters -- Luciene and Licemar Medeiros -- are among the acts who come to "Zumanity" after establishing their own show-business identities. "They're protagonists, who sort of play Cupid," producer Lyn Heward says of the pair. Photo by Craig L. Moran.

This is a fashion show," Lyn Heward says as the cast of "Zumanity" poses in various stages of undress for the opening number of Cirque du Soleil's new eye-opener.

The third Cirque to be custom-created for the Strip is also generating the most curiosity. The Canadian company that redefined "circus" for a new generation is moving away from its formula to explore "the human zoo" of erotic themes in a cabaret setting.

Oh, the acrobatics are still there. "This is a vertical fashion show," Heward later amends, as one of the female players ascends from the New York-New York stage in a trapeze rigging.

But something else is equally clear: "This is not a chorus line," the producer says at the risk of overstating the obvious.

The characters onstage have clearly left Cirque's familiar pastel dreaminess behind. And forget about defining "cabaret" as the symmetrical beauties of French import "La Femme."

This new brand of surrealism proves that it was a bit premature to compare previous Cirque productions to the grotesque Italian films of Federico Fellini.

The "Zumanity" cast includes overweight female twins in black bondage gear and a little person who works as an aerialist. Joey Arias, the corseted, whip-cracking New York drag queen who emcees, is not the only man wearing high heels onstage.

But there's also a man in a glittering silver "superhero" body suit of fake muscles, bearing a bold graphic of the male genitalia in lieu of a conventional codpiece. It makes the guy flexing real muscles in boxing shorts and gloves seem so normal, as though a "Star Trek" transporter beamed him from a training gym to the deck of an alien ship.

"We're not even looking at physical standards here. We haven't ordained what beauty is to everyone," says Heward, the head of Cirque's "creative content" division, and second-in-command to founder Guy Laliberté.

"It's a lot about acceptance, tolerance," adds theater and set designer Stéphane Roy.

"If you go back to (earlier) Cirque shows, `androgynous' is there," Heward notes. So is the physical comedy and juxtaposition of anachronistic elements to create a dream world.

The big difference this time is defined by the people onstage, she maintains. "What we're dealing with here is the strength of individuals. ... The characters in this show dominate this performance," Heward says. "They didn't hone their characters here. They came with one."

And it's a good thing, too. There has been little time for character development in the race to get the show open for its first paying customers Aug. 15, after an invited-guest preview on Thursday. (Though tickets are selling at full price, the shows leading up to a celebrity gala on Sept. 20 are considered previews.)

Cirque's creation process is chaotic by nature, and this one is upholding the tradition of playing it down to the wire. "The one big difference is we haven't had any yelling matches with our partner on this one," Heward says in comparing "Zumanity" to the opening of Cirque's groundbreaking "Mystere" and "O" for casino developer Steve Wynn.

The process of "debugging" the automation in the custom venue ate up a precious month after the cast moved in last June. A run-through performance more than a week ago clocked in at more than two hours, forcing "some really tough choices," Heward says.

But the thing that's really made this one the most challenging of Cirque shows is the lack of a blueprint.

"It's not just questioning the content of the show, it's questioning where Cirque is going," Heward says, her comments punctuated by brassy, manic swing music that is in itself a departure from the cinematic, new-agey strains of yore.

"We had a real comfort zone going and we want to continue. But we want to do something else, too. We feel our creative process allows us to do different kind of shows."

In "O," Cirque's creators met the challenges of water and the computerized physics of moving it. "We were working in a medium which we knew nothing about and had to find a way of dealing with that in our manner," she says. "This is our next new medium, the whole cabaret aspect of it. The fact that we wanted to go into this sensual experience is in a sense our replacement for the water."

The key to "cabaret" being so central to all descriptions of "Zumanity" is partly explained by the venue itself, and partly by a certain musical called "Cabaret."

"That's really the best reference," she says, in terms of the decadent aura of pre-World War II Berlin, the humor and "the strong characterization of the people who inhabited the cabaret."

The Broadway musical's New York revival in the former Studio 54 nightclub also may have given Cirque and MGM Mirage officials a road map on how to offer a third show in a smaller space, and one that wouldn't compete with the two still running.

But Roy's theater design goes beyond nostalgia to become a star of the show in its own right. There are no straight lines or right angles. Even the rows of theater seats curve in a venue accented by sofas and bar stools.

"Most theater design is art deco, which is very rigid and phallic," he says. "I go the opposite, I call it fallopian. It's like a woman, but not a passive woman. Things are always moving. It's not a femininity that's very plastic, it's a femininity that's into power."

Spiral staircases on each side of the stage frame a moving bridge that houses the band, raising the musicians above the action or lowering them to the stage as needed.

While traditional production shows change the stage scenery for each number, "We are always in the same place, always in the same context," Roy says. "The theater is a state of mind and the action onstage is one action from beginning to end. You're in a house of desire."

How explicitly those desires would be portrayed became a mill for local gossip. Even in a media event launching the show in April, the creative team was vague about how much nudity or explicit staging "Zumanity" would contain.

"In April, we didn't quite know how to talk about the show and we do now," Heward says. "It's really about desire and the many facets and points of view that people have about love," all the way from "the awakening urges as adolescents to the strength and tenderness of people who have seen 50 years together."

All that sex talk created some early relationship jitters with MGM Mirage, which announced a far-reaching partnership with Cirque in June of last year. But Heward now declares the two have "evolved in this process together. What would have been a discussable issue nine or six months ago is something we have mutually come to accept as a perimeter of this show."

And some of the Gaming Control Board's perimeters on "decency" are good, Roy maintains. "You don't have to go that far. You don't have to touch each other. You don't need it. We're not teenagers. We're not in provocation of the law."

But they are Cirque. And "Cirque will always test the limits in anything," Heward says, be it in acrobatics or sexual mores on the Strip.