Qui?

...DAM! So, yesterday, my father, brother-in-law (Igor), cousin (Ihsaan) and I went to see a Cirque du Soleil Show at Landsdowne Park. We had went the previous Sunday but were told our tickets were for the sunday show NEXT week. Sheepishly, we headed back to the car, managed to get our 5 dollars back for the parking, double checked the tickets which were indeed for June 4 and resolved to be on time for next week's - yesterday's - show. The show is called... 'Quidam,' and is part of a travelling show bound for Philadelphia and Cincinnatti.

During the intermission we tried to figure out what the narrative of the show was. My dad thought there was one. Igor didn't quite feel there was a story and Ihsaan and I thought it had something to do with childhood, innocence - a kind of Oliver Twist - with a little bit of odd Quebecois freakiness thrown in. This piece of text is from the website:

QUIDAM
Quidam: a nameless passer-by, a solitary figure lingering on a street corner, a person rushing past. It could be anyone, anybody. Someone coming, going, living in our anonymous society. A member of the crowd, one of the silent majority. The one who cries out, sings and dreams within us all. This is the "quidam" that Cirque du Soleil is celebrating.

A young girl fumes; she has already seen everything there is to see, and her world has lost all meaning. Her anger shatters her little world, and she finds herself in the universe of Quidam. She is joined by a joyful companion as well as another character, more mysterious, who will attempt to seduce her with the marvelous, the unsettling, and the terrifying.

Back to the Post:
..Okay. So we were a little off. The show was okay, I guess. There were the usual amazing acrobatics one associates with a Cirque performance, along with some obscure narrative sequences. There were also a group of players in what looked like Level 1 HAZMAT suits. I laughed hysterically at one scene, where one of these "Chiennes Blanches" plays a barking seal with a red balloon in his mouth. For a moment there, I thought I was being Punk'd.

All in all it was a good afternoon, with great company.

Company: 10 timbits out of 10
Quidam: 6 timbits out of 10

Image is from the Cirque du Soleil website... ladies and gentlemen...the QUIDAM!