Review: Should you see ‘Bazzar’? Probably, if Cirque du Soleil is your thing. BUT...
Cirque du Soleil’s “Bazzar” launched its four-week run under a makeshift “Big Top” on Charlotte Motor Speedway property in Concord with shows last Saturday and Sunday, but labeled Tuesday night as “Premiere Night” for media members — to give time for the working out of any kinks.
Unfortunately, based on what I saw Tuesday night, a significant one still remains.
To be clear, though, I’m not referring to anything that happens on the stage. As is pretty much always the case with Cirque du Soleil, which has brought its shows to the Charlotte area eight times in the past 13 years, the actual performance the troupe is serving up right now represents a wondrously colorful, sumptuously imaginative feast of fancy that hinges on dazzling aerobatic and acrobatic feats. Those include:
- A shirtless man in orange tights, dangling upwards of 20 feet into the air by two long straps that he uses to assume all manner of positions, but mostly ones that require him to be upside down or to hold improbable-looking splits (without the benefit of a safety harness around him, or a crash mat beneath him).
- A man and a woman, both on roller skates, atop a raised circular platform just 5 feet in diameter, in a dizzying partner routine that at one point sees them linked only by neck collars — with him going hands-free, leaning back and skating tight, speedy circles and her airborne, horizontal and spinning on her axis at over 100 RPMs.
And, near the show’s climax, a literal three-ring circus of acts that features a woman who keeps one, two, three, four, then finally five hoops hula-ing around various parts of her body; a larger man on his back, with his legs held skyward, essentially juggling a smaller man by using his feet both as a catapult and as a catching mechanism; and a woman with a clip woven into her hair bun and attached to a caribiner that’s attached to a wire that hoists her up in the air ... by, yes, her hair.
By the way, if it’s hard to picture any (or all) of this in your mind, my apologies. It’s not easy to use words to describe what these performers can do.
‘More of a visual’
As I’m well-known to say to my wife — every time I ask her to look at something on my phone when she’s in the middle of doing something else and she responds, “Can’t you just tell me what it is?” — “It really is more of a visual.”
Besides, I do think at this point that most people generally know whether Cirque du Soleil is for them or not. None of what I wrote above is going to influence anyone’s decision about whether to see “Bazzar.” What might, however, is this: While Cirque has usually does its thing on a grand scale, in uptown Charlotte’s cavernous NBA arena, the current show marks just the second time it has performed here in a “Big Top” tent setting for relatively small crowds that max out at just over 2,600.
I didn’t have a long enough tape measure with me, but I’d ballpark that the back row is less than 100 feet from the stage.
The effect of this is that there’s really not a bad seat in the house (unless you buy a ticket with an obstructed view, although even then you should be able to just shift from side to side to get a proper one).
As such, unless your eyesight isn’t great, the majority of the vantage points are close enough to the action that you’ll be able to see everything, from the ever-so-slight stumbles in the landings of the guys trading aerials on the teeterboard to the tiny, upside-down grimaces on the faces of the gymnasts hanging from that wooden pole with their legs wrapped around it, pretzel-style.
It is, in fact, intimate to the point that it’s impossible for performers to hide little, humanizing mistakes — like when a juggler bobbles a pin or when a flaming stick slips out of a “fire manipulator’s” hands.
That’s not what I meant, though, when I said up top that there were still a big kink to work out.
Neither is it objectively any sort of flaw that roughly half of “Bazzar’s” 100-minute running time is filled by music, singing, dancing and clowning around, stuff not nearly as compelling as the physical feats. (There will never be an instance in which I want more “story” — in this case one about the ringmaster, called “maestro” here, and a magical hat that others keep breaking or stealing from him — and fewer hair-hanging stunts. But maybe that’s just me.)
So, what problem needs solved then? Well, at least on Tuesday night, it just took WAY too long to get everyone underneath the tent.
Long lines and latecomers
We arrived at the entrance off Bruton Smith Boulevard at zMAX Dragway at 6:53 p.m., 37 minutes before the scheduled start of the show. By the time we got through the line to pay the $10 fee for parking, it was 7:15, and it had meanwhile grown several times longer.
This meant lots of people were late getting into the parking lot, which meant lots of people were late getting inside, which meant periodic floods of people being let into the venue while the show was going on, which meant having to contort in the dark in your small seat to allow latecomers to get to theirs without standing up and further blocking the view of the person behind you.
Which, when you’re trying to enjoy a form of entertainment that should serve as escapism, makes it VERY hard to escape.
(On top of that, the couple in front of us — after arriving noisily more than 40 minutes after the show started — proceeded to hold up their phones head-high to record long videos, despite warnings that only “short videos below the shoulder are permitted.”)
I wish that I could snap my fingers and make it so the ... whatever-it-is, maybe $10,000? ... that the Speedway nets every show in parking charges could somehow be built into ticket costs, allowing people to not have to fumble with credit-card machines and thereby almost certainly expediting the entry process.
But in lieu of that, let’s just say this: If you’re going to an upcoming show, arrive as early as possible — even if it means putting yourself into Cirque-like contortions to make that happen.
If you go: Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Bazzar’
Running time: 100 minutes with a 25-minute intermission.
Performance schedule: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays through Jan. 12; noon, 3:30 and 7 p.m. Saturdays through Jan. 13; 1 p.m. on Christmas Eve, then 1 and 4:30 p.m. Sundays through Jan. 14.
Main entrance: zMAX Dragway, 6570 Bruton Smith Blvd., Concord. (Note that the “Big Top” is across from the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Do not enter the actual speedway, as you might accidentally get caught up in the Speedway Christmas Light Show line.)
Tickets: From $36 to $122 apiece. Seats for children are $8-$10 cheaper.
Details: cirquedusoleil.com/bazzar.
This story was originally published December 20, 2023 at 1:44 PM.
