Pause right now, lovers of imaginative and whimsical live shows, and look long into the distance, to autumn, and tell us what you see.
Is there a machine full of bellows and brass cogs on the horizon? Is it puffing steam and driven by merrymaking acrobats dressed in costumes that are part 19th century and part science-fiction novel?
If you can see such a thing, you're likely sensing that Cirque du Soleil is returning to Southern California, and hauling its high-spirited, feats-and-funnies 35th production in tow. "KURIOS -- Cabinet of Curiosities" bowed in the circus troupe's hometown of Montreal in 2014, and it is making its way south and west, pirouetting into the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa on Oct. 15 and Dodger Stadium on Dec. 10.
Our city's Elysian Park landmark makes for an unusual but kind of dreamily perfect setting for the offbeat circus, which was founded in Quebec in 1984. Though you're much less likely to find a baseball in your lap or spilled peanuts than a performer intent on making you a part of his mischievous act.
The name of the show suggests that aforementioned 19th-century aesthetic and a peek at the costumes and production confirm it: The "makeshift mechanical world" is peopled by corseted, goggle-wearing, top hat-doffing beings who just may inhabit a "larger-than-life curio cabinet" overseen by the mysterious Seeker.
Aerialists and contortionists and high flyers and audience-cozy clowns fill the stadium-sized cabinet. As is the Cirque staple, story, music, clowning, audience interaction, costumery, and feats of a fantastical and how'd-they-do-that nature are woven together, much like the tweedy togs you'll see on some of the show's old-fashioned-y characters.
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Tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday, May 1.
