Try to think back to when Cirque du Soleil was new, if you can. Coming out of the 70s busking scene with its hippie values—itineracy, poverty, tribalism, artisanship, engagement, beauty, a healthy dose of Luddism—founder Guy Laliberté had created an outfit that looked like part of the general renaissance of small circuses, offering an alternative to the industrial spectacles epitomized by Ringling. His troupe played in a tent. There were no animals, no specialty acts to be pumped out one after another, and no stars as such—just an ensemble of marvelous artists whose skills served a larger narrative. The sight of fantastically costumed acrobats and clowns playing out a dream story in a dreamscape to the dreamy sound of someone singing lyrics specifically designed to be incomprehensible suggested another hippie value: hallucination.
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Of course, the notion that any of this represented authentic counterculturalism was also a hallucination, and it’s well past time to be lamenting the co-optation of Cirque du Soleil—assuming there ever was such a time. With seven shows in Vegas, one at Disney World, and others circling the planet on perpetual tour, like so many cable satellites, Laliberté’s company is industrial on a level that couldn’t have been imagined by the Ringling brothers, Barnum, and Bailey all put together.
But for all those factors have clearly contributed to the failure of Banana Shpeel, they’re just symptoms. What’s essentially wrong here is that Banana Shpeel has no reason to exist other than to fill a market niche. Slated to go to Broadway next February, thereby carrying Cirque du Soleil to a new demographic and a new proscenium-based format, it’s a show slapped together for no discernible reason other than to fit a venue—a creative venture based on a business decision, consummately commercial.
