Can Cirque’s spark survive its sale?
On Monday, it was announced that the controlling interest in Cirque du Soleil had been sold to TPG, an American private equity firm. Despite the corporate assurances that it would continue to be business as usual, the opening line of “A Day in the Life” kept echoing in my head. “I read the news today, oh boy . . . ” The Beatles allusion is intentional, because when I look back on my four decades of Cirque-watching, I think the end of the beginning and beginning of the end both took place on June 2, 2006, when LOVE, the Cirque show based on the music of the Fab Four, opened in Las Vegas.
It was one of those magical nights that Cirque pulled off with fairly steady regularity in those days, a mixture of high art and showbiz savvy so successful the cheering crowds almost drowned out the ka-ching of the cash registers.
It pointed to a whole new direction for the gaggle of unemployed buskers who founded a street festival in Baie-Saint-Paul, Que., and watched it take over the world.
Under maestros such as Franco Dragone (“O”) and Robert Lepage ( Ka), the shows got grander and more glorious, but were also settling into a certain sameness — soothing New Age music, young Asian gymnasts and steadfastly unfunny clowns all blending together.
That’s why co-founder Guy Laliberté came up with the idea of using his friendship with the late George Harrison as the “Open, Sesame” to the secret cave of Beatles treasures.
It was a great idea and the fact that Laliberté was soon on the Forbes list of world billionaires indicated how well it was working.
But the cracks in the plaster were already appearing.
An ill-advised partnership with Celebrity Cruise Lines in 2004 started to betray the form’s limitations. (Didn’t anyone think how difficult aerial acts could be as a ship cruised the high seas?) Attempts to conquer the biggest American cities (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles) proved disastrous. And the fascination with starry names proved an empty vessel, with universally panned shows built around such disparate figures as Criss Angel and Elvis Presley.
In the five years following the opening of LOVE, 12 new Cirque shows began around the world and most were failures. The central nervous system of the organism in Montreal still wildly generated new product, but if you try to make lightning strike so many times in the same place, you’re bound to start the wrong kind of a fire.
By January 2013, the private rumblings went public and the organization announced it was laying off 600 people, following a series of failed shows. Laliberté seemed more interested in his attempts to conquer outer space than in fixing his troubles on Earth.
Anyone looking for the mix of comedy and tragedy that seemed to be waiting in the wings should have been in Las Vegas on June 29, 2013.
It was the opening night of Michael Jackson: ONE, an audience-pleaser that proved Cirque still had the right stuff and its devotion to superstars wasn’t totally misinformed.
But while the crowds at the Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas were still cheering, there was screaming and weeping at the MGM Grand as a performer named Sarah Guyard-Guillot fell to her death during Ka. She was the first Cirque employee to die while performing.
A sudden awareness of mortality can trigger a mid-life crisis and that seems to be what happened to Cirque. Fewer new shows are being gestated, but dozens of “projects” are taking their place, including a dinner theatre in Mexico and a scheme to join with NBC-TV for its live broadcast of The Wiz later this year, then transfer it to Broadway.
It was only a matter of time before Laliberté decided to turn the keys to the kingdom over to the accountants.
Cirque has already played to more than 160 million people worldwide and I firmly hope it will continue to dazzle us. But you’ll have to prove to me that a financial group whose major achievement has been the “branding” of J. Crew and Neiman Marcus will understand the impulse that turned those crazy buskers from Baie-Saint-Paul into a dazzling comet that streaked so thrillingly across the world entertainment sky.