Cirque de Glace – Evolution
The Lowry, 29 April 2011
There is no possibility of this ice show leaving you cold.
The spectacular skating, dancing and acrobatics; the fabulous special effects and costumes; the grandeur of the story – the show tells the tale of life on earth – all this will make your pulse race ever so much faster. Some of the stunts have a genuine sense of danger about them; you hold your breath as you watch.
We begin with the Big Bang and the formation of our sun; we end where we are at, at the minute: human beings as masters of creation, the earth’s future imperiled by our actions.
One could critique the ecological polemic that lies at the heart of this work, and there’s quite a leap from the end of the first act (where man has just invented the wheel and discovered fire) to the beginning of the second act (which finds us on the moon, having sussed out space flight): a bit of a truncated timeline, you might conclude. But actually it is all about what happens on stage: the show, the reveal. And that’s spectacular and spellbinding, absolutely breathtaking as has been said.
Cirque de Glace – Evolution is an extravaganza and an entertainment extraordinaire. It is at The Lowry until 1 May, details are here.