It is the reality of life as a critic that you inevitably find yourself sitting in a room, picking bits of salt and vinegar chip off your lap and being asked to judge people doing things that you could not hope to do yourself in a million years.
Multiply Michael Jackson by a factor of Cirque du Soleil, and it’s pretty much just a parade of people who are prettier than you, more talented than you and have achieved far more in their lives by your age. I tip my cheap, tacky hat to the talents of all the performers showcased.
That said, such phenomenal gifts create phenomenal expectations.
Cirque du Soleil’s latest offering in Adelaide is Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour. On the surface, the match between the Jackson canon and the Cirque universe is strong: themes of innocence, childhood, wonder, nature, growth, unity and all that other squishy, hippy malarky that both circus and pop can convey so majestically.
Jackson was all about transcending social constructs, something which Cirque du Soleil has amply demonstrated through its rigour, humour and commitment to storytelling.
I must offer context here about my own biases: I am a Cirque fan before I am an MJ fan. I remember visiting Le Grand Chapiteau for Saltimbanco and Quidam, both of which are touchstones in my memory of childhood. I remember an utterly immersive experience from the moment the tent rose over West Terrace, to the second we got back in the car. I was thrilled, I was transported, I was inspired.
So with that in mind, please accept my grudging disappointment with The Immortal World Tour.
The show was never sure who came first: Jackson’s ghost or the performers on stage
For starters, the Entertainment Centre is debilitating to any kind of ambience the show is trying to evoke. With all the charm of a particularly dull steelworks, the arena and its industrial sensibility are totally at odds with the intoxicating Cirque I remember and love. Exposed wires, sound and camera ops trundling about and a feeling of flimsiness pervaded the set, which consisted of a two-storey stage behind a long catwalk and small, circular second stage.
The show began with a group of five Jackson-esque dancers in some of the King of Pop’s memorable outfits. They performed a graffiti-themed routine on wires before ceding the stage to the show’s guide and host – a mime in a silver, glittery tracksuit. An accomplished mime, dancer, popper and locker, this smiling man never seemed to be allowed to reach his full potential. This was a feeling common to many acts; constrained by songs and poorly structured “narrative”, the show was never sure who came first: Jackson’s ghost or the performers on stage.
The stand-out acts reminiscent of my early Cirque experiences were allowed to dispense with a the slavish biographical angle and create moments that illustrated Jackson’s songs – women in black, LED-covered bodysuits performing an aerial hoop routine to “Human Nature” in the dark on a backdrop of stars, two aerialists styled as swans performing “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You”, and a pole dancer I wish to hire as my personal trainer for life.
Many of the other acts focused almost solely on dance, and often suffered due to the truncated tracks played. We would just be getting in to one routine and it would skip a second verse or bridge, not allowing the legendary build in Jackson’s songs to occur in full and robbing us of some potentially explosive moments. It seems unlikely that legendary perfectionist Jackson would have been happy with the standard of choreography on stage – imprecise, repetitive and hidden in bulky costumes.
The band looked like it was having fun up the back, but amid rabid and wildly overwrought sampling, the only two instruments I’m sure were being played live were the electric guitar and the cello. The rest were swallowed in a wall of noise that either re-created Jackson’s originals mechanically, or re-styled them using some contemporary electro-dance music tropes that didn’t really fit a show of this gravity and level of resource.
In the end, The Immortal World Tour fails to satisfy either as a Michael Jackson show or a Cirque du Soleil show, and this is disappointing given the calibre of ingredients in the mix.
The producers must have known that blending these two brands and their long histories, mores and baggage would require finesse and nothing short of perfection. What they’ve ended up with, and I wonder if the phrase “direction by committee” might apply, is something aimless and tokenistic with frustrating glimpses of what could be if these two phenomenal forces of entertainment were better orchestrated and integrated.
Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour is at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre until October 17.
