LITTLE ROCK — Cirque Dreams founder, director and producer Neil Goldberg promised in a recent interview that his company’s Cirque Dreams Holidaze show, which opened a four-performance run Tuesday night at Little Rock’s Robinson Center Music Hall, would be both kaleidoscopic and unique.
Cirque Dreams Holidaze is all that and more.
A cast of 30 performers, mostly from the United States and Russia but including a few Ukrainians, a couple of acrobatic Ethiopians, a trio of Uzbeks, a Cuban and an Aussie, start out as Christmas tree ornaments, then descend, or ascend, to dazzle and delight.
I was ready for the tinsely tumbling, balancing, acrobatics, aerialism and general mayhem, but not so much for the vocals — an Angel-Ice Queen-“Dickens”-Elf quartet serves as masters of ceremonies and sings (or lipsyncs) to a too-loud recorded score.
Top of the line in bringing down the house: A whiterobed Santa Claus as the steadier of a tiny acrobatic “helper” (the program, surprising for a cirque show, actually identifies the performers, so I can proudly praise Sergei Zolotukhin and Anastasia Zolotikhina by name); a quartet of jump-roping reindeer (Christopher Brow, Lisa Brown, Billy Jackson and Lee Reisig); a Wobbly Penguin (Kirill Rebkovets); a pair of talented skaters (Viacheslav Liubivets and Olena Oinieva); a trio of cyclists (Lioudmila, Viktoria and Vladimir Vassilenko) and a magical quick-change act in which Natalia Khazina and Ilya Ryshkov had nothing up their sleeves — except other sleeves. In “A Symphony of Bells,” some audience “ringers” and a Harpo-like conductor (Jackson again) provided lots of laughs.
Penguins, angels, reindeer et al. are back on stage at 7:30 p.m. today and 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Thursday, at Robinson, West Markham Street and Broadway, Little Rock, under the auspices of Celebrity Attractions.
Ticket information is available by calling (501) 244-8800, (800) 982-2787 or at the websites, Ticketmaster.com or CelebrityAttractions.com.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 11/28/2012