Yes, the Cirque du Soleil can still surprise

All Cirque du Soleil shows are similar, but some have something that makes them special. Kurios. Cabinet of Curiosities is one of them. An imaginative show like a story without a plot, populated by very surprising and curious characters, such as the accordion man, the bathyscaphe man, the machine man, the robot insects, and the inventor scientist with an air of the Franz de Copenhague from TBO. A fantasy with magical touches that invites you to enter this scientist's laboratory and discover that, like E.T., you can fly with a bicycle, even upside down (as the French acrobat Anne Weissbecker does); that you can see an invisible lion, or you can cheer on the non-existent tightrope walker Giuseppe to jump from the trapeze into the water basin in the Invisible Circus of the fantastic Argentine clown Facundo Gimenez, who in the second act offers a very funny animal mime act.

The director of Kurios –a show premiered twelve years ago–, Michel Laprise, evokes the world of the late 19th century and inventions like the gramophone, the typewriter, and electric light, with a very elaborate comic book aesthetic. He even allows himself the audacity to present a hand theater act, like the one Nico Baixas used to do (who played the role of the accordion man in this show a few years ago), projecting the images onto a large balloon of the era. Or the visual game of the inverted world of a tightrope walker who climbs towards the sky with chairs (Nikolay Astashkin).

Laprise has sought surprise over difficulty in every scene. He achieves it in the acts already mentioned and in others, such as the impressive contortionism of four gymnasts, the aerial straps (the Cuban Darián Cobas Vargas and the Russian Ilya Salmov), and the superb trampoline (spectacular costumes), which stimulates the desire we all have to fly.

As is usual with Cirque du Soleil, the packaging is excellent (scenography, lighting, props, costumes), but the music, which walks between the finesse of string instruments and the forcefulness of percussion, does not always accompany the poetry of the acts. Although the immersion into the underwater world at the beginning of the second act is not well understood, it is certain that the show will be liked, especially by children.