Circus De Solei

Radio City Is Transformed Into a Cirque Tent

The hearty-voiced fellow in the cherry-red top hat and matching silk cape obviously has a lot on his mind. Sweeping across the football-field stage of Radio City Music Hall as the ring master of “Zarkana,” the latest Cirque du Soleil spectacular,  he sings incessantly of an absent love, as if she could only be conjured by bombastic synthesizer-rich balladeering, a whole iPod playlist of Celine Dion songs delivered one after another.

For all the man’s throbbing vocalizing it’s pretty hard to feel his pain, I’m afraid, or even pay much heed to his lyric lamentations. That’s because you spend the usual amount of time at the new extravaganza from this French-Canadian entertainment behemoth trembling in dread for the aerialists, contortionists and other daredevils plying their phenomenal wares onstage.

As has been the case at Cirque shows I’ve seen in the past, more than once I had to resist the urge to leap from my seat and holler, “Get down from there, you senseless girl!” The tingly suspense generated by the many feats of gravity-defying gymnastics draws on our instinctive fear that at any moment someone could end up splattered across the stage. (This uncomfortable pleasure is also, I suppose, among the reasons audiences remain hungry for the much-derided “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” )

Cirque du Soleil and its impresario, Guy Laliberté, belly-flopped without a net last year with their ill-fated production “Banana Shpeel,” in which the company attempted to forsake its trademark formula and create a more narrative-driven show with a vaudeville theme.  Cirque has returned to home territory with “Zarkana,” written and directed by François Girard, which is essentially a traditional company presentation outfitted in extra layers of lavish digital technology and lush, exotic art direction.

Careful attention to the song lyrics reveals a smidgen of storytelling: that top-hatted magician, called Zark and portrayed by the French-Canadian pop star Garou, is in love with a woman named Lia (the similarly single-named Cassiopée), who remains stubbornly elusive until the grand finale. (Perhaps she’s off having a very elaborate manicure?)

Also unusually, and I am tempted to add unfortunately, all the songs in “Zarkana” (written by Nick Littlemore) are performed in English instead of the usual fantasy Esperanto that’s been a Cirque trademark. But while the recipe has been tweaked here and there, this new production plays to the company’s core strengths: it’s basically a series of familiar, reliably exciting old-school circus acts embroidered in baroque, sometimes bewildering art direction. There is also, of course, the requisite pair of jabbering, mugging, whimsical clowns, as delightful or as tiresome as ever, depending on your age and your tastes. (One of them is shot from a cannon and careers around above the audience, brandishing what appeared to be a Spider-Man T-shirt.

Cirque du Soleil CEO book signing at the SLS Hotel at Beverly ...

Who: Guy Laliberté who has been making the rounds for his new Cirque du Soleil show  IRIS coming to Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre on July 15.

You know you are in good company when a Birkin bag is left unattended at a party for three hours and its PERFECTLY fine … The bag belonged to Sam Nazarian ‘s sister Angella Nazarian , who were both in attendance with her husband David  Nazarian , to get a sneak peek at the new photo album from Assouline, created by Cirque du Soleil CEO Guy Laliberté,  on his last self-funded mission to space. Also in the crowd were some of LA’s best brand-making ladies – Barbara Lazaroff who is often credited for bringing ex-husband Wolfgang Puck from the kitchen to the TV, and Lois Aldrin who is currently battling for her earnings as a key role player in her ex-husbands, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, recent renaissance back into pop-culture. Lois, who is famous around Beverly Hills for her bejeweled and stenciled nails, has gone back to her maiden name so she will hereafter be referred to on the Truffle as Lois Driggs Cannon .

Gaia, the book, comes in three different sizes ranging from $75, $900 and $7000 for the largest size, whose pages were being turned by a white cotton glove wearing lady. This book is only available for pre-order in store or on the  Assouline website . Several ladies were lugging around oversized shopping bags with signed copies of the enourmous books on the side courtyard of the SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills.

For those of you unfamiliar with Guy, he is not only Cirque du Soliel’s founder and current CEO but he is also a billionaire. He started at as a street performer in Canada and built the show from the ground up. His passions are space travel and water issues around the globe – from lack of clean water to droughts to ocean pollution. His book is intended to overwhelmed the reader with grand visual of the Earth from space, where major mountain ranges look like brown scratches in a row and clouds look like speckled cottons clusters and the amount of blue water dwarfs every other color.

We will be back at the SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills next week for the launch of Jose Andres (the SLS resident chef who runs Bazaar on the lobby level) new lunch concept “Tres” which gives agents, business men and ladies on the go a lunch in 30 minutes.

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Billboard