Cirque Du Soleil are the masters of music, staging, lighting and most importantly celebrating the incredible capability of the human body.
They’ve also got a VERY formulaic look for their shows and frankly it is mostly a variation of theme – especially with the touring productions.
OVO is sadly the first Cirque show I did not like. After 20 years of giving universal 5* reviews around the world, this to me was an heartless mess.
This show is still packed with breath-taking talent – you just have to wait far too long to get to them.
I was actually bored in-between the acts. It’s disastrously produced with needless filler. The excuse that they’re preparing the next scene just isn’t true – it has more padding than an AMAZON gift box.
The biggest problem facing this show is that the ‘clowns’ were not funny, not lovable and brought the entire show to an emergency stop! Unheard of for Cirque.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still 5* talent who blow your mind with their physical talents – they’re worth the ticket price alone – but each act, all of which I’ve seen before with one exception, were broken up with up to 20 minutes of filler. It’s tortuous in places.
Sometimes I wonder if Cirque Du Soleil are too clever for their own good. The pure brilliance of the acts is often to impressive to comprehend. Add in the Cirque ‘art’ and your head begins to explode.
At £85 for best seats, this show sadly left me cold – unheard of for Cirque Du Soleil.
Too many shows? Too few ideas? Cashing in on their legendary brand? Who knows but this is an incredibly sad, depressing & disappointing day for me.
I wanted to love OVO. The excitement of seeing a new Cirque show was ruined.
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Enjoy our audio / video review via YouTube:
The pure acrobatic and athletic skills of the Cirque performers will leave you speechless.
You can almost hear the universal chants of “how do they do that?” from around the arena.
Ah, the arena. This is a slight problem too – it’s just too big, almost greedy to put this Spiegeltent designed production into a 5000 seater space. I think the bubble may have burst judging by the number of empty seats tonight at Nottingham.
A great shame. Why Cirque would jeopodise their brand with this show is beyond me. Unlike myself, I’m guessing 99% of people will have never seen Cirque before. This doesn’t even compare to previous touring shows like Alegria.
Basically Cirque offer the best produced circus spec acts, aerialists and performers who push their bodies beyond comprehension – anywhere in the world.
The problem with this show is that is just takes too long to get to the gold dust. I genuinely loved the UK tour of Planet Circus for £10 more than this show tonight – it engaged and wowed in equal measure for an 8th of tonight’s price.
So what is the story? Honestly it’s irrelevant – just watch and enjoy the spectacle.
OK, OVO is teeming with life! Insects work, play, fight and look for love in a non-stop riot of energy in motion. It looks beautiful and it’s utterly immersive.
A couple of things were of concern tonight with the sexualisation of women and fat shaming but maybe I’m looking too deep.
What a shame, I wanted to love it. Sadly, it’s just not up to Cirque par despite the outstanding and hard working talent within the show.
Review by Alex Belfield for Celebrity Radio 14th September 2018.
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