If you’ve never seen a Cirque de Soleil show, you are in for something awesome. The acrobats make the stunts look so easy that the audience doesn’t realize how difficult they are. Established in the 1980s, Cirque incorporates circus styles from around the world and each show has its own central theme and storyline. Like its performers, Cirque is constantly trying to create something new and different.
The latest show is Paramour, its first ever show made for Broadway and that’s where Cirque du Soleil falters. Paramour at the Lyric Theatre is a take-off on the old Busby Berkeley musicals featuring lavish production numbers with a thin story line. A movie director, AJ (Jeremy Kushnier), discovers Indigo, a new protégé (Ruby Lewis), and builds his film “Paramour” around her. Predictably, a romantic triangle develops when Indigo falls in love with young composer Joey (Ryan Vona).
The music, written specifically for this production by composers Guy Dubuc and Marc Lessard (who go by Bob and Bill), is trite and forgettable and the plot line is mundane. It isn’t easy to write a good Broadway musical and it’s even more difficult when the show is really just the backdrop for the true stars, the circus performers. Sometimes it is hard to focus on the story during Paramour and the audience becomes distracted by action onstage.