DV Dude decided to catch a show this time in Vegas, and the newest, hottest show is the Cirque du Soleil production "Michael Jackson One." How is it? If you like Michael Jackson, and you like Cirque du Soleil, you will absolutely love it. If you are not a fan of either, then this show won't make you a believer.
As with any Cirque du Soleil production, the visuals are absolutely stunning. Imaginative sets and costumes, a fantastic lighting design, and the music turned up to 11 so that the bass rattles your sternum.
But also, as with any Cirque production, the storyline that strings together the various set pieces is flimsy and paper-thin, and follows the long-used device of a group of people who fall into the magical world, and are chased through-out the production, and then are accepted. Every Cirque production I've seen follows this formula, and it hasn't worked in anything I've seen yet, and doesn't work here either.
While the visuals are stunning, and they are, they are also a bit of a mess. It seems the belief system at Cirque is to throw as much visual noise out there, have a million things going on at once, and maybe you'll catch 20% of it. The visuals suffer from too much ADHD - let's throw everything, including the kitchen sink, and hopefully it will work. The designers really need to study Bob Fosse more closely, and see how you can do a group of people and make it powerful. Or study Micheal Jackson for that matter - his visuals were a lot more focused and clean, and in the end, more powerful. "Michael Jackson One", to use the old cliche, is a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
One exception to this is the number for Billie Jean. It is a masterpiece. Just a group of dancers, dressed in black, with lines of lights on their bodies. The lights change intensity, colour and direction. Simple, yet stunning. It got one of the biggest rounds of applause of any number.
A lot of the visuals just seem like Cirque noise - people doing Cirque gymnastics for no other reason than this is what Cirque does - the visuals and stunts don't necessarily have anything to do with the content of the song.
There is obviously some very talented people putting this together, but the shame is they do not go further with the material. The life of Michael Jackson was a rich and ultimately sad one, with a lot of pathos and joy and a whole lot of weirdness on all sides. Cirque hints at it occasionally, but they then run away from it. There is so much one could do here, make the production more meaningful and emotional, but they don't. Which really is too bad, because it would make it so much better.
The performers work so hard, the production is so intricate, and there is so much to praise, so it feels terrible to not give a glowing review. A lot of people worked very hard to make "Michael Jackson One," and you see it every single moment. It is not a failure by any means - just a missed opportunity to make something better.
I should note that the audience loved it.
