“Cirque du Quoi?”: Mystère turns 15, still beautifully ambiguous after all these years
February 2, 2009 by Lisa McLaughlin
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When I first saw Cirque du Soleil’s Mystère five years ago, my expectations were calculatedly low. Never having seen a Cirque production or even a Strip production, I went to Treasure Island with a headful of unspecific testimonials (”It really is amazing,” “If you haven’t seen it, you have to see it”) from people who clearly didn’t realize I wasn’t the type to embrace 90 numbing minutes of tumbles, flips, pantomime, pursed lips and pretentious Euro-whimsy.
By part way into the show, of course, I was more than happy to admit to myself how wrong I’d been. Actually, I’d been right, except for the adjectives. These minutes weren’t numbing; they were almost unbearably sensitizing. The whimsy was there too, but what these performers and technical sorcerers had somehow managed to pull together was not pretense. It was the real thing. Which was, and still is to me, baffling — how do you call an uncanny montage of light, sound, feathered bungee aerialists, Janus-masked pole dancers, Dali-esque stilt creatures, clowns, pot-bellied babies, thunderous live music and fog effects “the real thing?” The real what?
Mystère proved that it didn’t matter what, as long as it was done well. From the concept to the costuming to the God-knows-how-many man-hours put into practicing the impossible just so that something new and interesting might happen, this show (even more than Nouvelle Experiénce, Cirque’s 1991 stint at Mirage) made itself the standard for Vegas spectacle. If you can do it, why not? Let everyone else be the pretenders.
Anyway, Mystère just marked its 15-year anniversary, celebrating with a round of show passes offered to Las Vegas’ media community. A few of us at CityLife went last Saturday and were reminded of why the spectacle is still happening after all this time. As a somewhat more seasoned Cirque fan today, I wasn’t quite as blown away as I was that fateful night in 2003, but it was still close. What’s more, I realized I’d forgotten over time something very integral to Mystère’s beauty and success: a deep understanding that less is more.
As overwhelming as the show can be, it’s really not the unrelenting sensory assault I’ve remembered. After all the swinging, flipping, trampolining fury of one moment, they then dare to pare down to this: one gently rotating, green-lit mound at center stage where two austere, ripped dudes in tight white pants simply turn each other into sculpture through a super-slow-motion gamut of silent, vaguely homoerotic one-on-one lifting feats. It’s all about muscle, balance and Zen-like focus, and it’s completely mesmerizing — a stand-alone vignette that, like a few others here, seems to hover a little above the rest of the production while staying consistent with it all the while. By the time these two are done and weathered, shock-haired clown Brian Le Petit comes back for another round of crotchety mischief, well, that somehow fits too. Fits what, I’m still not sure, but it was nice to be reminded of why I don’t care.
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