In its 31-year history, Cirque du Soleil has played to over 150 million fans all over the world. It currently has eighteen shows running, nine of which are touring, and boasted revenues of $855 million last year. So what’s left?The only thing: to conquer Broadway. That starts with the $25 million musical “Paramour,” which opens next spring at the Lyric Theatre, followed by the touring production of “Kurios,” and hitting the trifecta in the 2016-2017 season with a splashy revival of “The Wiz.” There will be a taste of the latter with the half-dozen Cirque acrobats integrated into aerial sequences for the NBC holiday television special “The Wiz Live!” on December 3, starring Queen Latifah, the singer Ne-Yo, David Alan Grier, Mary J. Blige, and newcomer Shanice Williams.“Paramour” assays the challenge of combining the famed ethereal circus arts of the Montreal-based company within the context of a musical theater narrative. The production is the first project for Cirque’s newly created theatrical division headed up by Scott Zeiger, a veteran Broadway producer. Of the company’s desire to expand into the “traditional theater industry,” Zeiger said, they told him, “‘Here’s a blank canvas. Take us in that direction.’ The power of the brand, the power of the creative and financial people, has been spectacular and supportive.”For “Paramour,” Zeiger has corralled a galaxy of talents including Jean-Francois Bouchard, the company’s chief creative content officer, director and choreographer Philippe Decouflé, and composers Guy Dubuc and Marc Lessard, who under the name of Bob & Bill are responsible for the soundtracks of several Cirque shows. Zeiger has supplemented the team with artists more schooled in the ways of Broadway, including West Hyler, an associate director on “Jersey Boys,” and an unnamed and highly successful playwright hired to punch up the musical’s story. In addition, “Paramour” will feature songs by Andreas Carlsson, the Grammy-nominated Swedish songwriter who has penned hits for the likes of Celine Dion, Katy Perry, and N Sync. All this will be in the service of a romantic fable set in the Golden Age of Hollywood of the 30s and 40s in which a young actress-poetess must choose between the ruthless and brilliant film director who has kindled her ambition and the composer who has awakened her heart. Zeiger says that the pyrotechnics in “Paramour” will be sparked not only by the acrobatics that are woven seamlessly within the narrative but also in the filmic techniques that are a specialty of the Paris-based Decouflé. “It’s not a ‘Broadway musical’ per se,” added the producer. “There’s traditional singing and dancing, but there are also 23 acrobats [out of a cast of 38] who are helping to define the story. It’s a hybrid if there ever was one, but a splashy and theatrical one.” “Kurios” — which is currently in Southern California, and soon heading to Atlanta, Boston, and New York — apparently has also been able to fuse an emotional whole out of its disparate parts under the direction of Michel Laprise. When it was in Chicago last summer, Chris Jones, the chief critic for the Chicago Tribune, wrote, “Cirque has come roaring back with a dazzling, hyper-detailed, potent, quixotic and generally fantastic show that reveals this extraordinary company’s singular capacity for exploration and metamorphosis. It is an exquisitely detailed affair…forging an arc of palpable narrative logic.” Whether Cirque can metamorphose into a Broadway powerhouse will be more evident when “Paramour” begins previews on April 16 at the Lyric, one of Broadway’s biggest houses. It opens June 2 for an open-ended run.
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