Carolyn and I took our friends Paul Dini and Misty Lee to see Corteo, which is a Cirque du Soleil touring show that's currently parked in Los Angeles for a couple of months. We love Cirque du Soleil shows. Yes, the plots are often incomprehensible and unnecessary. Yes, much of the music is pretentious and overripe. Yes, there are all these weird people and creatures who wander on and off the stage for no good reason. You tend to overlook all that because there are moments on the stage — quite a few in your average Cirque du Soleil show — where you see breathtaking beauty, mostly in a human form defying all reality. You just sit there thinking, "I didn't just see a person do that." But you did. The physical feats are always stunning — juggling, tumbling, aerial antics, etc. Our favorite acts this time were a bed-jumping routine using beds like trampolines, a lady who foot-juggled about eight large hoops and somehow had them all going at once, and an aerial act with men literally flinging ladies across the rafters of the tent.
But I have to say: There's one more thing you have to ignore if you're going to enjoy Cirque du Soleil. I don't mind paying a steep price for a great show but there are moments when the way they're getting it from you makes you feel like someone has turned you upside down by the ankles and is shaking you to make sure they got every cent. Decent seats are $80-$90 each and no matter how you buy them, there seem to be extra handling charges. (One of the oddities of buying tickets on the Internet is the underlying principle of Handling Charges. It seems the less they handle anything, the more they get to charge you for Handling Charges.)
Then when you get there, it's $19 to park. Popcorn is five bucks. A bottle of water is $3.75 and so on. And everywhere, people are hustling you to buy CDs and t-shirts and special "Tapis Rouge" and "Club Cirque" package deals. Plus, while the Cirque du Soleil shows in Vegas have lovely, comfy seating in permanent theaters, the touring shows are in portable tents that cram people in like a really, really cheap airline. Hey, folks…I know it costs money to teach a guy from the Ukraine how to spin on his head but come on.
It's a great show and if you can afford it, catch it.