Paramour

"Simultaneously frenetic and tedious…The athletic circus acts that are laced throughout the show provide the real entertainment, and make the surrounding book scenes and songs feel even more bogus and synthetic…There’s no denying the breathtaking magic of seeing bodies swim through the air with such apparent weightlessness. Too bad the musical surrounding them feels just as weightless, and far more forgettable." Full Review

"Cirque du Soleil delivers a show that is acrobatic, operatic, and completely entertaining. This is musical theater as an extreme sport...This highly stimulating barrage of talent is undeniably entertaining. When it comes to telling a story, however, it's deadly...'Paramour' was written and designed specifically with the intention of using circus performance to tell a new story, and occasionally, it succeeds in doing just that, to thrilling effect." Full Review

“Rather than play up what it does best — eye-popping stunts and trippy visuals tied together by a loose concept — Cirque went for a Franken-show made up of misshapen parts: circus, dance, musical numbers, interactive projections...The first act is tantalizingly close to working, especially if you can blank out the godawful dialogue...The second act devolves into an incoherent mess topped off by an interminable rooftop chase involving trampolines.” Full Review

“A desperately mediocre (if extravagant) song-and-dance affair tricked out with specialty acts that are far more engaging than the dopey romantic triangle meant to hold our attention...The real fun (and beauty) happens when the hokey dialogue ends and the artists get to show their wares...You leave wishing the creative team had hired proven talents from real Broadway musicals or else, like shrewd moviemakers, left half of the material on the cutting-room floor.” Full Review

"The show has a book (corny), a score of show tunes (mindless), and a cast of singing and dancing actors...More happily, it also has those aerialists, acrobats, jugglers, and tumblers we love—and plenty of spectacle...On occasion, smart connections are made between the stage acts and the movie romance...A jaw-dropping high-wire act performed by the phenomenal twin aerialists is more authentically beautiful and sensually alluring than any of the claptrap going on below.” Full Review

“Fitfully thrilling and consistently baffling...A work this extravagantly misguided generates its own excitement. The mind can’t rest as it struggles to make sense of a woman warbling the title song as a man balances an umbrella on his head...If ‘Paramour’ has all the elements of a traditional Broadway tuner, they are jumbled together in so topsy-turvy a fashion as to achieve a perverse originality, a three-ring circus of artistic muddle, miscalculation and mayhem. And zombies.” Full Review

“They seem to have gone out of their way to produce as banal and generic a musical as possible. Featuring atrocious dialogue and forgettable songs, it feels more like a parody than the real thing...The show does have some imaginative, thrilling sequences...But no matter how many times the action spills out over the stage and into the auditorium, it's not enough to draw you into the mess.” Full Review

"It's more like the idea of a book, an un-fleshed-out concept with lines that sound like placeholders…The songs often sound like they were translated from another language without a grammar check…When 'Paramour' gets down to what Cirque du Soleil does best, it becomes an entertaining show…It may verge on being a shambles, but the acts are genuinely thrilling…It's certainly possible to have a good time at 'Paramour' -- as long as you know what you're getting into." Full Review

"Though 'Paramour' features some spectacular circus acts, there’s something ludicrous about its efforts to marry them to what’s supposed to be a traditional Broadway musical...Indeed, every scene or song is accompanied by specialty acts or special effects that range from the peerless to pointless...All the dexterous derring-do acts not just as a distraction from the dopey dialogue, uninspired lyrics and largely generic music, but as pretty much the only good reason to see this show." Full Review

“Nothing more than a tissue-thin excuse to trot out the various acrobatic routines for which the Canadian troupe is famous. If you go looking for clever dialogue or memorable songs, you won’t find them. However, if you come in expecting spectacular circus-themed joy, it’s here in abundance...With so many stagers involved, it’s no wonder the production is confusing...Fortunately there is enough high-flying pizzazz to make the overall show worth enough 'ahhhs' to justify your time." Full Review

"'Paramour' is a thinly disguised excuse to put these gymnasts/dancers on the stage. Noted. The story is a combination of every old plot you can shake a stick at...Indeed there seems to have been a bit of overthinking with this story. This is unfortunate because everyone on that stage is bringing their 'A' game–and they are a formidable collection of talent...Is 'Paramour' brilliant? Not quite. Did I have a great time – you betcha." Full Review

“A piece that excites only intermittently as a circus attraction and never as a theatre piece...Many second-rate movies or plays goes at least this deep and, sadly, many go deeper...Yes, the show fails where it counts most. But it's gotten everything else right. The music is lush, brassy, and sumptuously evocative of period excess...The show could not look better...Some substance is ultimately required, but there's nothing to be found beneath ‘Paramour's’ bewitching surface.” Full Review

"In between the predictable plot lines, the $25 million production offers inventive stage acts...Most of the visual elements...are dazzling. Director-conceiver Philippe Decoufle keeps the action flowing, and every now and then, the stage performances and the romance connect...The twist, and the downside, is the story itself, which is banal. That doesn’t mean the show isn’t entertaining—or the leads don’t deliver. Just that as Broadway musicals go, it’s more Las Vegas than Great White Way." Full Review

“A middling, mindless diversion that awkwardly combines circus feats with elements of traditional musical theater...Cheesy dialogue and forgettable new songs are thrown in...All things considered, ‘Paramour’ is a lame, harmless alternative for international tourists who want to see a Broadway show but would prefer something with the Cirque du Soleil imprimatur than a long-running hit like ‘Chicago,’ ‘The Lion King’ or ‘The Phantom of the Opera.’ Frankly, I think they can do better.” Full Review

“A bizarre mutant entertainment bred from the worst traits of Vegas circus shows and Broadway musicals. If you love either of those things, you’ll hate this...A series of clichés about humanoids accompanied by sounds...The daring acts are performed with evident skill. For Cirque fans there are too few of them. For the rest of us, the problem is that with only one exception they have nothing to do with the ‘narrative.’” Full Review

"Cirque du Soleil’s first-ever Broadway spectacle boasts high-flying aerialists and acrobatic flippers — but the show still flops...Disposable songs, a schizophrenic tone and nonsensical scenes don't help matters. This hapless hybrid of Cirque and the Great White Way does something unexpected: it makes you want to run away and not join the circus." Full Review

"This is the show with which the Montreal-based global franchise plants its standard on Broadway, promising—and, in spades, delivering—a mashup of '42nd Street' backstage romance, non-stop 'Ziegfeld Follies' and Cirque’s brand of acrobatic arts. It’s as eye-popping as Christmas at Radio City, if not quite as intimate or touching...Audiences may wonder why that annoying story kept stopping the action dead in its computer-assisted tracks...We’ve come for the visuals." Full Review

"While there's a story as well as the acrobatics for which Cirque du Soleil is known and show-enhancing video and film elements, that story falls way short of being captivating. And the dazzling visuals not only upstage that story but often seem more wedged in than smoothly interwoven...Given the money spent to bring 'Paramour' to Broadway and the talent behind the scenes and on stage, one can't help wishing they'd come up with something less derivative and, alas, dull." Full Review

"Awesome acrobatics and first-rate Vegas/Busby Berkeley visuals are not anything Cirque needs to prove...As a musical, alas, the awkward story is a Golden-Age Hollywood cliché, the choreography is generic and the serviceable music dips lavishly into retro-bombastic influences...The book is dull padding between the wows...We have to wait until someone has a dream ballet or A.J. has a nightmare in order for the creators to justify the marvelous physical virtuosity." Full Review

"'Paramour' is most successful when it just chucks the plot entirely…By the second act, the three very uncharismatic leads and their generic tunes have definitely worn out their welcome…Wonderful is a chase across Manhattan rooftops. It’s most wonderful because the three leads are now gone completely...The number puts much needed bounce back into 'Paramour'...'Paramour’ features one of the most outlandishly awful big musical numbers ever. Yes, ever!" Full Review

"The production is a bumpy, swerving ride. It begins with an assault on the senses, with vast musical routines...If the goal is disorientation, the numbers succeed splendidly...The tone of the story, which has groaningly awful dialogue, veers uncertainly between broad satire and semi-seriousness...'Paramour' gives the sense of being created by a group, with everyone tossing in something." Full Review

"A hybrid musical combining a conspicuously familiar plot with a series of genuinely thrilling athletic sequences…'Paramour' goes heavy on the company’s signature stunt sequences to our relief, because there isn’t much to be extracted from the often eye-glazing book and score…Kushnier makes the most of his cliché-ridden role, exuding confidence and hubris as needed. Lewis has a beautiful voice and gamely follows the worn path laid out ahead." Full Review

"Sometimes overstuffed and awkward but it always finds its footing when it highlights its soaring, rubber-bodied stars…Unlike other Cirque shows, this one does a really fine job of integrating the acrobats into the narrative…It's thrilling stuff…It's got a cliche-ridden, lumbering plot and dialogue that veers from leaden German operatic to kiddie jokes…A lot of 'Paramour' looks like too many cooks were tossing in ingredients…When the show works, it works." Full Review

"The directorial credo of 'Paramour' appears to be more is better. Scenes are overstuffed with competition for our attention, perhaps in order to distract from a thin book and bland/utilitarian songs, few of whose lyrics are intelligible...For anyone particularly interested in the medium, however, the show is a must on the basis of both imagination and technical expertise...All in all a spectacle the sum of whose parts are not larger than the whole." Full Review

"Philippe Decouflé hasn’t managed to make the plotline gel into a sensible, dramatic whole, but he certainly keeps the pace up with the help of the lighting designs of Patrice Besombes and Howell Binkley, the projections of Olivier Simola and Christophe Waksmann and Pierre Masse’s rigging and acrobatic equipment which had to be carefully—and safely—integrated into the scenery." Full Review