Cirque Plays 'Meet the Beatles'

If you have noticed a lot of superlatives cropping up on the Beatles front, it is only because I want to be clear about the massiveness of the challenge Cirque faced in creating "Love": to visually suggest and ultimately attempt to augment an experience of hearing the most imaginative as well as the most popular music ever recorded. It is therefore understandable that Cirque mostly decided to sidestep this challenge. Rather than bring the Beatles' music into the timeless and mythic world of Cirque, the Canadian troupe has offered routines under a loose narrative that revisits the Beatles' story (by now a nearly mythic story in its own right) and the era framing their recordings: growing up in post-war England, Beatlemania, the guru, the band's rooftop concert, the anti-Vietnam protests, and the omnipresent spread-fingered peace sign. In short, in place of Cirque's surrealism we get '60s psychedelia. The result is a show that actively and shamelessly courts the nostalgia of Boomers. If one has any doubt about how user-friendly Cirque wants this show to be, the production keeps cute children on stage for many numbers. "Oh, look Beatlets!" said the girl sitting next to me.

I honestly hoped for a more ambitious effort than "Love" delivers; the Beatles music could conjure  worlds in ways I hoped would spark Cirque's collective imagination. But "Love" presents a Cirque's greatest hits of sorts that is only slightly less familiar from being more choreographed and less acrobatic than Cirque's other shows. This isn't to say there isn't much to admire (and that is beautiful) in "Love." "Lady Madonna" contains some fantastic dancing and "I am the Walrus" is fun in its churning of imagery about the stage. There is a cool creation in which silhouettes, and recordings of the Beatles speaking are mixed in an impressive display only slightly undermined by those voices bringing back the boys as those lovable mop tops. (Oh, that Ringo!) "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was the single most beautiful element offering Lucy as an elegant acrobat of the sublime (sorry to sound like Harold Bloom) while a massively earthbound man tries to capture her and her attentions.

Other things don't work at all. There is a hideous attempt at humor with a skit that involves bird poop and a recitation of the lyrics to "Blackbird." There is a dull inline skating routine (with pointless crucifixion imagery concocted under the skaters). Finally, the circus created in "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" takes Cirque so close to its beginnings that despite years of being dyed by Vegas, the troupe's roots show through.

Mostly, despite my love of the Beatles, with "Love" the show I felt outside the target audience of Boomers. "Love" feels more like a template for Cirque to expand the franchise. One can easily see how they can use the "Love" approach in the next scheduled Cirque project: Elvis.

(Photo: Sarah Gerke/LAT)