You’ll never have another chance to see the much praised classic Cirque du Soleil production Quidam. Replete with outstanding circus acts, and taking its imagery from surrealist painters such as Magritte and Delvaux, Quidam explores the downside of life, alienation. There is, however, a happy ending, and children do seem to enjoy it as much as adults. First presented in 1996, and seen by millions throughout the world since then, it is now at the end of its final world tour, closing here in New Zealand very soon.

Quidam tells a simple story about a dysfunctional family whose lives are transformed by an encounter with a random visitor. Father (Steven Ragatz) is immersed in his newspaper when he is at home, and spends all his time at the office on workdays. Mother (Carol Valim) has retreated to her own world as she sleeps in her chair, and their ignored and lonely daughter Zoé (Alessandra Gonzalez) longs for some excitement.

During a stormy night, a very tall, headless man sheltering under a very large umbrella and carrying a blue bowler hat, comes to their house. He passes his hat to Zoé, who puts it on, and then the magic commences. The parents fly away in their chairs and Zoe goes off on a grand adventure full of excitement, with all the action intensified by an astonishingly varied live music soundtrack composed by Benoit Jutras and played by a fantastic band of six musicians plus two vocalists.

We share the family’s experiences of strange encounters, confusion and disorientation, their slow awakening to the richness of the world into which they are immersed, and eventually their delight in being reunited with a self-assured Zoé. They are surrounded at times by surreal nightmarish figures and silently capering crowds, or confronted by extraordinary characters such as the Ringmaster John (Mark Ward), ghoulish Boum-Boum (Guilherme Fortes), and The Target (Ardee Dionisio). We also share their awe and delight in time-honoured circus routines which are very much a speciality of Cirque du Soleil’s artistes.  

There’s an array of the traditional cirque floor, apparatus, and aerial acts, clowning and acrobatics, solo and group presentations, interspersed and sometimes overlapping with figures lurking in the background or popping out of the floor, band spots, and the swarming groups who appear and disappear with fading lighting and puffs of smoke.  The by-the-books risqué comedic act with audience participation, which seems to be a required element of big cirque shows like this, comes in the form of Clown Cinema, and has many people laughing uproariously as the dragooned participants do their best to act out the degradingly sexist silent movie scenarios provided by clown/director Sean Kempton.

The aerial work is hung from a purpose-built curving steel structure, the télépherique, which arches right up into the roof of the stadium, amazingly high, and extends out over the audience. Five pairs of rails provide sliding aerial anchor points, enabling performers to appear magically and disappear into the darkness rather than having to walk across the bed of the stage. Red silks drop down for contortionist Julie Cameron to entwine herself in. Sturdy ropes appear for five acrobats in the  Spanish Web ensemble (MeiMei Bouchard, Angie Brooks, Guilherme Fortes, Francois Gravel, Carol Valim). Three gleaming metal hoops materialise for a splendid trio of aerialists (Danila Bim, Lois Camila, and Lisa Skinner) who pivot and balance, twirl and swing, and lie along the rim of the hoops as they are raised and lowered .

On the non-skid, rotating stage floor which is lit from beneath, Cory Sylvester is the master of the German Wheel, a pair of taller-than-a-person steel wheels connected by small struts. He rolls to and fro, performing acrobatics inside the wheel, then tips it over onto one rim and manipulates the momentum of its movement through weight-shifting to make the wheel twist and spiral, lowering the wheel towards the floor til it’s almost horizontal, then rising again to switch to the other rim.

Wei-Liang Lin is dexterous on Diabolo, rolling one, then two, then three large spools inside a loop of string suspended between sticks, keeping the spools moving along the string in between the flicks of the wrist which send them soaring high overhead to fall and be caught again on the string.  

Two balancing acts are exceptionally fine. The extremely strong Baaska Enkhbaatar hand balances on delicate wooden canes and contorts and cants her body into impossible-seeming poses as she ensures the centre of gravity is in the right place for her precarious poses. And even more impressive, is the slow motion, gravity-defying Statue duet by Alexander Pestove and Natalia Pestova, in which they form a single column, with her head standing on the back of his neck, her legs extended upwards, and both sets of arms tucked into their respective bodies. Subsequently, a pair of combined horizontal balances over one hand add to the impression that their bodies are as strong as marble.

Two large ensemble segments give a sense of the size and skill of the company. Twenty cast members of all shapes and sizes, ages and genders, take to the floor for an extended sequence involving double and triple long ropes for group skipping patterns.  Ropes are swapped out by turners to jumpers, and eventually a flower-shaped grouping appears with turners rotating ropes in different directions with each hand, and jumpers constantly moving around the petals. Two featured skipping artistes, Norihis Taguchi and Katia Banhegyi, shine in exceptional feats such as handclapping press-ups between rope turns, and speed skipping in which the ropes blur into motion. And finally, a Banquine showcase combines synchronized acrobatics and an array of human pyramids built up through spectacular leaps and criss-crossing somersaults and tosses which transfer bodies from one human column to another.

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