Friday, February 11, 2005 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

SHOW REVIEW: Tough Act to Follow

From a technical standpoint, 'Ka' is unmatched, but the story remains difficult to understand

Lo Ngaching demonstrates some of the martial arts that give "Ka" the flavor of upscale Hong Kong action movies. Photo by Jeff Scheid. The Slave Cage, aka the Wheel of Death, is one of at least three showstopping sequences in "Ka" that people will remember more than the story.

More? They give us a $165 million spectacle and we want more?

Well, yes.

The Catch-22 of Cirque du Soleil's epic "Ka" is that it accomplishes so much, we want it to go the distance and bring home the dramatic potential of the story it invests so much stagecraft in telling.

It's a pitfall Cirque might not have seen coming: Getting us just interested enough in its first real attempt at storytelling that we want to know more, not less, about the characters performing the acrobatic derring-do synonymous with Cirque.

But Cirque in Las Vegas also means new realms of automated stagecraft. On that front, "Ka" is unmatched anywhere in the world. For many, the attempt to create a new form -- a hybrid of theater, circus and cinema -- will be a valid enough reason to see it. To hone in on what doesn't work should not come at the expense of the big picture, that head-shaking astonishment one gets from the sheer ambition of it all.

And yet, there are simple questions that demand answers: Is this a story worth the money spent to tell it? And can the audience follow it?

The answer to the first is a qualified yes. The second, for now, appears to be "not really."

"Ka" is in large part the vision of Canadian director Robert Lepage, who has made a career of reimagining classic arts such as opera and epic theater. It was his idea to expand Cirque's brand by ditching the dreamy surrealism in favor of darkly textured atmosphere, and by connecting the acrobatics with a sketch of a story.

But for a generation raised on film, a sketch just opens the door to wanting more. If this had been an adaptation -- be it Greek mythology or "Lord of the Rings" -- the theatrical shorthand would have been easier to pull off. As it is, viewers spend as much time trying to follow the fable's sudden shift from a beach to the arctic north as they do admiring the stunt work.

The scope is clear from the opening: A barge floating grandly over a black abyss, docking with a stage that slides out of the void. The boat, patrons will later discover, is a multipurpose scene-stealer called the "cliff deck," an 80,000-pound rectangle lifted into all manner of positions by a gantry arm.

The human focus is on twins (Jennifer and Cheri Haight), apparently the prince and princess of an ancient and mythic Asian dynasty. Their martial arts exhibition is interrupted by flaming arrows from an attacking tribe. The female twin (Jennifer Haight) escapes on a fleeing ship with her nursemaid (Teuda Bara) and valets, while the male twin (Cheri Haight) is hustled away on foot by the court jester (Kleber Conrado Berto).

Mind you, all of this was clearer on a second viewing and from a better seat. For all the money spent on both the "Ka" theater and the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, it's not being spent to pull audiences closer to the stage in a more vertical rake. And having both twins played by very petite women makes it hard to understand one is supposed to be male, leading to confusion when the story takes romantic turns.

The saga cross-cuts to follow the separated twins, revealing a series of wondrous set pieces.

When the ship hits a storm and tosses the nursemaid into the sea, the twin sister dives in to rescue her. The scene shifts like a movie by suspending the two 90 feet above the stage and in front of projected video, while Rene Dupere's cinematic score shifts from bombastic to elegiac.

The female twin and her entourage discover a beach full of whimsical puppet crabs and turtles, an Eskimo village and a rain forest complete with a Tarzan-like ruler (Igor Zaripov).

The male twin falls into the camp of the villains, who have a machine capable of grinding human skulls into gun powder. One bad guy's daughter (Noriko Takahashi) comes to the aid of the twin brother in time to save him from the Slave Cage, aka the Wheel of Death, one of at least three showstopping sequences people will remember more than the story.

The wheel is like a carnival ride, only with people running in place on top of two of the five cages instead of making the windmill revolutions inside them. There's another great moment involving a flying machine, and a chase that turns the angled cliff deck into a giant pegboard where performers fly into the void when the pegs disappear.

The finale is another tour de force: a battle scene staged on a vertical plane, with performers controlling the wires from which they hang with a remote control. But it's also where "Ka" disappoints, on both a dramatic and perhaps even technical level.

Those who arrive in time to soak in the atmosphere of Mark Fisher's stunning theater design just know those catwalk-linked side walls are going to enfold the audience in the final battle. They don't. And most of the promised fire effects seem to have gone missing as well.

But what the ending really lacks is the story's emotional payoff.

This is what I got from watching "Ka": Wheel of Death. Whoa.

And this is what I got from Cirque's synopsis: "When the Chief Archer's Daughter falls for the Twin Brother she finds her loyalties unexpectedly divided, and realizes she's in a battle of wills with her doting father."

Finding a way to explain that within the show -- perhaps from additional narration (a preamble was added during previews), or with occasional video close-ups that would let more than the first few rows see the characters' faces -- would be an accomplishment to rival even the cliff deck.