“Zarkana,” the new production from Cirque de Soleil, is a spellbinding, spine-tingling experience that artfully manipulates the majestic frame of Radio City Music Hall’s stage to conjure a whirling canvas that transports the audience to wondrous realms of magic and illusion.
It is hard to imagine a more stunning mélange of art direction and digital effects than the psychedelic spectacle on display in “Zarkana,” which is playing from now until September 2 in Manhattan. Indeed, whether the stage is morphing into an alternate universe, a giant spider web, a pit of gargantuan serpents, or the inside of a clock, the pure visual dazzle is just as worthy of oohs and aahs as the circus performers’ acrobatic feats of derring-do.
Unsurprisingly, the trapeze artists, contortionists, jugglers, and daredevils are awe-inspiring. Few moments pass where you are not either driven to the point of anxiety by the perils they embrace, or clapping in breathless delight at yet another impossible stunt survived.
All of this drama might sound too intense for children, particularly little ones, but I saw the show in the company of my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and though there were a few tense moments, on the whole, she too was enraptured by the performance—her first circus—at least until the end of the show, which ran past her bedtime. She was particularly charmed by the terrific pair of clowns that serve as the show’s comic relief.
That is not to say that “Zarkana” is without its faults. The musical interludes that tenuously interweave the circus’s acts bring to mind a third-rate rendition of “Don Giovanni” as re-scored by Elton John. But they are infrequent enough that they do not sour the eye candy.
If you go to this circus wanting to recapture for two hours the amazement that came so naturally to you as a youth, or if you want to introduce your children to a 3-D extravaganza far more astonishing that any you’re likely to catch at the multiplex, then “Zarkana” will enchant you just as much as you hoped—and perhaps even more.
