Review: Cirque Du Soleil TORUK – ‘The First Flight’

TORUK – The First Flight by Cirque Du Soleil
Written and directed by Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon
Starring Raymond O’Neill, Kevin Mylrea, Guillaume Paquin, Giulia Piolanti, Priscilia Le Foll
Rogers Place
December 22-26 (additional show added Dec 24 @ 5pm)
Tickets: Regular — starting at $42 *Student pricing options available
https://www.cirquedusoleil.com/toruk

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While TORUK – The First Flight recaptures some of the same magic that propelled AVATAR to huge Hollywood heights, it’s sci-fi source material unfortunately prevents the show from truly soaring.

TORUK – The First Flight is the latest offering from Quebec-based performance troupe Cirque du Soleil. From now until December 26, Rogers Place hosts the show, which transports Edmonton audiences to the alien world of Pandora and the Na’vi people from James Cameron’s AVATAR. TORUK tells a new story, one that takes place before the events of the movie, and blends together AVATAR’s unique visuals with Cirque’s signature effects, technology, and acrobatic performances. At its best, the resulting mix is thrilling and unsurprisingly stunning to watch, but more often than not, TORUK felt stifled by its plot and backstory.

From my seat in the lower bowl of the arena, the stage was the most consistently mesmerizing component of the evening. The floor, which took up half of the rink’s surface area, had raised and lowered portions creating a detailed 3D environment. Above it hung a ring-shaped rig made to look like intertwined branches, and at the rear of the performance area was a massive screen wall and two tree trunk structures. Throughout the night, different visuals were projected onto the floor and back wall, creating entirely new settings for the story to journey through. From stony caverns, to neon-floral forests, floating rocks, dynamic rivers, waterfalls, and oceans (the water effects looked spectacular) no two scenes felt the same despite the same basic stage structure.

As for the show’s major props, the tree trunks at the set’s rear opened and closed in massive mechanized movements (the scale of which was awesome) and the large ring above head would shape-shift as well, lowering vines, and altering itself to form a new set piece in each scene. The 16 puppets used also impressed, with flying creatures, running beasts, and roaring monsters all adding a lived-in feel to the temporary Pandora world. A favourite touch was the foliage that would pop up from trap doors around the floor — these minor details showed the keen attention paid to the intricacy of the set design. From up close, all of the major visuals were clear and striking, but I couldn’t help but think the effects would have been even more convincing from the cheap seats further back, which made me wonder where the best ticket value would be.

One thing that did pay to be close to the stage for were the actors, gymnasts, and acrobats. If the attention to detail of the set was impressive, the minute movements and costuming of each performer was astounding. The Na’vi actors, dressed in tight blue costumes (which nicely accentuated their tree trunk-sized thigh muscles) each looked unique and discernible from one another, and moved in ways that made you forget they were human — crawling, leaping, flipping, and climbing around the set. The different characters and clans were marked with individual hair styles, clothing/ accessories, and behaviours. Each of the leads of the show Ralu (Kevin Mylrea) and Entu (Guillaum Paquin), two young brothers of one Na’vi clan, and Tsyal (Giulia Piolanti), a female from another who joins their adventures later in the show, never were confusing to follow — a testament to the nuanced character building on an often crowded set. As opposed to the stage’s visuals however, the characters could become a challenge to tell a part from up in the nose-bleeds as there was no monitor to provide a closer look at the action below.

Although the visuals, set and character design, as well as the performances were fun and easy to appreciate consistently, the story that connected everything was not. The Storyteller (Raymond O’Neill) laid out the basics of the AVATAR mythology and world before and during the show and guided the audience (in English, not Na’vi thankfully) through the plot points as the two-act story unfolded. It was clear from the get-go however that the story would not be a major selling point, and judging by the confused looks and unsure claps that popped up from the crowd, it wasn’t for many other audience members either. Although AVATAR remains the highest grossing movie ever, it never gained the cultural relevance of something like Star Wars; even those who haven’t seen it can tell you something about the Death Star, Luke Skywalker, Lightsabers, or the Force. Try that with AVATAR’s Tree of Souls, Woodsprites, Viperwolves, or Omaticaya clan and you’ll get blank stares — just like those of my fellow audience members.

Highlighting the entire performance were two scenes of memorable acrobatics. In one, the young Na’vi Ralu performs a solo rope-climbing act in a bioluminescent forest, and in the other a group of eight Anurai clan members use a dinosaur-like skeleton as a balancing beam. In both cases, you get a focused look at inhuman acts of strength, contortion, and balance, all wrapped into gorgeous visuals, impressive choreography, and a simple story (the first displays Ralu discovering the quest he must go on, and the second was a clan ritual). These scenes provide the essence of a Cirque du Soleil  experience; they had my jaw-dropping and finger pointing, saying “DID YOU SEE THAT?!?” Out of the 20 scenes in TORUK, these two found the right mix of all it’s varied cinematic and theatrical elements. If only the rest of the show had the same sense of balance as its performers.