Toronto
My trip to Toronto was a whirlwind one. I was in and out in approximately 16 hours. In those 16 hours, I accomplished three things:
1. Shopped at ROOTS! My hotel was right downtown near the Eaton Centre, so as soon as I checked in, I ran over there with less than an hour to spare before my evening plans. I tried on nearly everything in the store (if I’m only going to shop there once, I may as well make sure I buy everything I possibly can, right?) but wound up making only two purchases: a cute Roots muscle tshirt for me, and a surprise gift for nakednsf. Shhhh!
2. Had dinner with my friend Tony, who recently moved to Toronto from Vancouver, and his new boyfriend Jim. We ate at some restaurant called Milestones… I think. I was too busy talking to notice. It reminded me of the Cheesecake Factory without the two hour wait. Dinner was pretty great, but, as I took my first sip of Cosmo, I learned something awful about Canada: they have liquor laws like fucking Utah. My Cosmo tasted like pink water. I could detect no vodka whatsoever. What’s the fucking point of serving a Cosmo if you can only put 1 oz. of liquor in it??? Good lord.
3. After dinner was the main event: a performance of Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo!
I don’t want to go into too much detail, as I hope many of you will buy tickets (hint hint), but I absolutely loved it. I’m actually struggling to decide if this could be my favorite of the touring shows I’ve seen! I don’t count the Vegas shows, A) because they are sit-down productions, they can do things technically that the touring shows could never do (i.e. perform in a huge tank of water). And B) well, I have never seen any of them.
Corteo is a major departure for Cirque in several ways - gone is the crazy make-up schemes that obscured performers’ faces and rendered them nearly emotionless; gone, too, are the other-worldly costumes that made you think “where am I? what are these people supposed to be?” And most noticeably, the show is completely in the round, with the audience split in two facing each other, with the stage running through the center of the Grand Chapiteau (aka The Big Top). The rest of their touring shows feature a 3-quarter thrust stage design.
Overall, the show felt simpler than other Cirque shows, even though I am told it’s far more advanced and complex technically than the other touring shows. (Case in point: the stage crew actually gets a bow after the performers!! When do you ever see a crew taking a curtain call?) It also felt warmer to me than other Cirque shows. So many of their other productions, even though I love them, try so hard to be weird, mysterious and surreal that they leave me kinda cold. Corteo has a warmth to it that just made me smile.
Anyhoo, that’s Toronto kids.