Corteo is quintessential Cirque du Soleil, insofar as it has a clear, simple and alluring theme that it flubs totally, but has such jaw-dropping set pieces that you don’t exactly leave with dramaturgical quibbles at the front of your mind.
And by ‘jaw-dropping set-pieces’ I mean there’s a bit where the audience is invited to bounce a performer of diminutive stature strapped to four large inflatable balloons around the Royal Albert Hall as if she were a human volleyball. Is that… okay? I’m going to be honest, it didn’t feel 100 percent okay to me, although one-metre tall Ukrainian performer Valentyna Paylevanyan seemed to be having fun. Nonetheless, I’m unlikely to forget it, even if I wanted to: and that’s Corteo, baby!
Created and directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, the show is apparently influenced by nineteenth century Italian clowning, and is possibly set at the funeral of Stephane Gentili’s Mauro the Dreamer Clown, although it is often very hard to tell. ‘Whose funeral is this?’ somebody asks at one point, during one of the brief bits that actually look like a funeral. ‘I don’t know’ replies another, which possibly looks a bit Beckettian on paper but in fact pretty much sums up how half baked the concept is. Clown funerals are a thing! Why not do something coherent with the idea? A circus show doesn’t need a story per se, but Corteo’s refusal to explore its own premise is so pathological it speaks of demand avoidance.
Still, if you’re here for setpieces, Corteo delivers - there is some astounding aerial work, some cool bouncing around on big beds, some amazing hoop stuff, and it’s all enhanced by a traverse staging that makes the Royal Albert Hall feel reasonably intimate.
Ultimately my frustration with Cirque du Soleil in general lies in the fact that despite an abundance of world-class acrobatic talent, every single one of their shows goes down the same route of gesturing at an interesting concept but then not being arsed to follow through. But if you don’t mind that their clown funeral show isn’t really very interested in clown funerals, and you like spectacular acrobatic feats and also small performers being tossed around the theatre, then you will enjoy Corteo very much.
