cirque du soleil: ovo

Ovo was the first Cirque du Soleil show Ma and I have been to see... but I'd seen some of their stuff on TV, so I kind of knew what to expect.

What I didn't quite expect was how amazing it would be to see it live.

Our seats were pretty good... front row, but very much at the side of the stage... but while we had an obstructed view of some of the acts due to either rigging or other performers standing exactly in the wrong spot, there were other acts where I think our view point was actually better (the slack wire act specifically).

Although the individual seats themselves were kind of on the narrow side... you get very friendly with your neighbours whether you want to or not.

But that was really about the only thing I had to complain about.
As always with Cirque du Soleil shows (at least from everything that I've seen), the costuming, make up and sets are just top notch. Ovo is an insect based show... and that does lend itself to some amazing costumes by Liz Vandel.

Of all the acts/performers, my favourite was the one that closed out the show, the Crickets...

I could seriously have watched two hours of these guys alone. Not only were their costumes sensational with the extra legs, but they all had the cricket movements down to a fine art too... that rocking back and forward thing, and just very "cricket-like" poses.

Actually almost all of the performers, especially the ones who seemed to be on stage for large chunks of the show, had wonderful insect-like moment... the scarab beetles, the contortionist spider girls... all great.

But, as I said, the crickets were my absolute favourites, and the whole "bouncing off the wall" routine was absolutely breathtaking. In fact I had, as the young people say, "all the feels" watching their routine.

There was a moment at the top of every bounce that they did where they just seemed to stop, completely motionless in mid air and just hang there... and usually that would be when they would just walk from mid air to the top of the wall, or grab the wall and hang on, or something... and then one of them would do a great bounding run along the trampoline walkway...

Amazing!

The other act that I was both amazed by and a little sad that we didn't have a better viewpoint for was the Flight of the Scarabs which took place right over our heads.

As in they hoisted the net above us and one side of the trapeze was literally over our head... so much so that at the end of the number I was covered in the talc they use to stop their hands from sweating.

It was a little hard to watch though, being directly over our heads, although we had a great view of the performers as they climbed up at the beginning and also when they flew into the net at the end.

The three main characters, Ladybug, Foreigner and Flippo were great in their scenes too...

I couldn't help thinking of Le Gateau Chocolat every time Ladybug came out though... I think he'd appreciate her giant bug boots if nothing else.

And there was a great moment with Flippo at one pont when he "squashed" one of the spider girls (she was under the stage and he was pantomiming squashing her)... I don't know if it was just me, but I did let out an "awwww" when he did it, but he must of heard it and reacted by mocking the noise and then squashing her even harder... which made a bunch of people on my side of the audience go "awwwww" even more... which led to him getting the other side of the audience to say "ewwww" instead of "awww" and we got into a bit of a back and forth for a while there.

It was also amusing when he pulled some audience members out to try and convince Foreigner that there were more fish... errr, bugs in the sea...

And the fact that they do it all without any real dialogue beyond the occasional word is fantastic... it's all strange noises, but it totally works (weirdly it reminded me a bit of the made up language in The Sims... it has that kind of feel).

Some of the other highlights were the troupe of female foot juggling ants, the metamorphosing butterfly doing a silks routine, as well as the amazing rope work of the butterfly love duet.

Also, because I have a soft spot for performers on four stilts (ever since the Landstriders from The Dark Crystal), there were a couple of what I'm guessing were stick insects at a couple of points in the show which were just gorgeous... actually they were slightly creepy and a tiny bit menacing, but I still thought they were awesome.

I would definitely go and see another Cirque du Soleil show now that we've seen this one, although now I have a better idea on where the good seating spots are.

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