It’s gotta be tough to keep a cirque-type show fresh.
By now, most of the people who are going to be interested are familiar with the elements of the Euro-style circus experience: the acrobatics, the whimsy, the inspiring narrative, the creative costuming. There’s a formula to it, one that needs to be shaken up every so often with new stories and new acts in order to keep fans interested and draw in new patrons, and it can’t be easy to balance experimentation with expectation — that’s the kind of unknown road that could lead to missteps like incorporating BMX freestylers into the show, or giving Criss Angel a whole one of his own.
On paper, something like a new show called Paranormal Cirque must’ve seemed like a no-brainer to its parent company, Cirque Italia. After all, what is cirque but a lavish fantasy, and what is horror but dark fantasy? People love Halloween and haunted houses and scary movies; why not incorporate those tropes into a dark ‘n’ sexy live performance?
As it turns out, juggling all of those elements and still delivering a bona fide cirque show isn’t as simple as turning down the lights and turning up the “boo” factor.
After entering the black-and-red big top staged in a Palmetto field easily accessible from both sides of the Sunshine Skyway, we enjoyed a few Halloween Horror Nights-style jump-scares in the tunnel leading to the main event, courtesy of some enthusiastic performers — Chainsaw Guy loves his job — before being led personally to our seats by an usher. They did this for everybody, which stretched the process out interminably due to the limited number of entrances. Once everyone was seated around the impressive castle set, the lights dimmed, and a figure in a hooded robe appeared onstage to, well, set the stage. Unfortunately, Paranormal Cirque’s sound system wasn’t quite up to handling the extremely bass-heavy effect on the character’s voice, and what should’ve been the beginning of a cohesive narrative was lost in an incomprehensible low-end rumble. (As this was the show’s second-ever night, one hopes this sort of technical glitch can be rememdied as the show evolves.) His intro was followed by a group of dancing female zombies who struck me as more Cathouse than cabaret.
The first real act, a troupe of burly male gymnasts made up similarly to the Thuggees in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom who attacked a set of single bars with power and grace, was in our opinion the most impressive and exciting of the night; the production might’ve been better served saving it for later in the show.
From there Paranormal Cirque settled into a familiar pattern of alternating between the usual acrobatic and crowd-pleasing acts — delivered with some sort of showy horror-tale-related element — and comedic crowdwork, the latter largely ringled by a little person dressed as an evil clown, and more profanely grumpy than funny.
The main acts were fine and fun enough, from the plate spinner to the ring aerialist. A take on The Exorcist in which the bedridden possession victim became a soaring demon-vampire suspended by her hair was particularly effective; a late-in-the show set of Vegas-esque illusions came off as out of place. The sequencing and pacing seemed a bit off — again, this is a brand new show, and perhaps some rejiggering is in order to get things running smoothly and deliver the best production possible.
Paranormal Cirque was also hampered by its comedic interludes, which were overlong, often employed obvious crowd plants and really not that laugh-inducing. It can be tough to temper horror with humor, but writers and filmmakers have been doing it for years, and some of the bits seemed like they were just padding the evening, filling the time. When the drunk girl walking her drunk companion out of the row in front of us in the middle of the show muttering “she’s my friend, she’s my friend” over and over and the couple next to us who arrived late and seemed to have brought two bananas as seat holders are funnier than the comedy onstage, the comedy onstage needs work.
Overall, though, Paranormal Cirque has potential. There are plenty of fans of horror and dark fantasy out there looking for something a little different, and with a little work, a version of this show could deliver just that.
This article appears in Jun 14-21, 2018.