‘Zarkana’ returns Cirque to its native tongue

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The words got lost in translation between two summers of “Zarkana” at Radio City Music Hall.

The new Cirque du Soleil that ultimately landed at Aria – now up and running as a “soft opening,” with the official premiere Nov. 9 – was created for the cavernous art deco theater of New York City legend.

But if you went there in 2011, you would have heard the performers sing in English. It was Cirque’s experiment with “rock opera,” composed by Australian musician Nick Littlemore.

But when “Zarkana” returned to Radio City last June after playing in Moscow and Madrid? The English lyrics were gone, replaced by Cirque’s trademark nonsensical, invented language.

“I still find it a little weird when I’m walking through the hallways and I hear this foreign, weird language,” Littlemore confessed during recent rehearsals.

“But it’s cool,” he adds. The singers “know what the lyrics meant, so even though we’re talking in a made-up language, there’s still kind of an intensity to it.”

The change, along with a condensed running time, may not have been entirely coincidental to a new future revealed for “Zarkana” between its first and second New York summer.

Both Cirque and CityCenter executives pegged “Zarkana” as a quick and proven replacement for the underperforming “Viva Elvis,” circumventing the usual two-year process to create a new show from the ground up.

“Zarkana” was designed to fit the stage of Radio City Music Hall. But in a happy accident, only about 3 feet had to be lopped off each side of the set to nestle perfectly at Aria. And creators say it will be more immediate and impressive for audiences in the steeply raked, 2,000-seat theater than it was in the 5,000-seat home of the Rockettes.

“Radio City is a very unforgiving place for its size,” director Francois Girard says. “It’s not really a place meant for human performance. People are all too small.”

“Zarkana” settles onto a Strip where other Cirque titles have thrived because they pose no language barrier to international visitors. And it’s a return to Cirque’s original appeal, reversing a streak of Las Vegas branding ventures that drafted the music of the Beatles, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson.

“Zarkana” – a title combining the words “bizarre” and “arcane” – is so rooted in acrobatics that the characters are actual circus performers, not inhabitants of a fantasy world.

They are, however, rather ghostly. The thematic concept echoes both the opening of “Phantom of the Opera” and the Louis Malle film “Vanya on 42nd Street”: an abandoned theater regenerating itself.

“The theater became like the first character,” explains Stephane Roy, the set designer who also created the immersive environment of “Zumanity.”

“They all went into the walls 70 years ago and they’re coming back to life.”

The title character, Zark, is a magician who seems to have no luck at his craft. “His tricks fail,” Roy says, “but what he does is awaken other things. … He’s calling them without knowing.”

Director Girard made his mark in film with “Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould” and “The Red Violin.” Before “Zarkana,” he also helmed “Zed” for Cirque in Japan, though that one was fatally wounded by the post-earthquake drop in tourism.

Girard first reported for work “seeing myself as a newcomer who had everything to learn from the acrobatics.” But after a few days of rehearsal, “I felt at home,” he says.

“As a director, I was putting in play everything I had learned from theater and opera. There’s something very operatic about these shows. The grand tableaus carried by music and the emotional arcs.”

Girard says he tried to deliver Cirque’s desire for a modern and “edgy” approach, particularly in the atmospheric video that frames the acrobatic segments. As a “snake woman” weaves her spell onstage, film footage of live snakes surrounds her on the proscenium.

“But at the same time, we’re right in the core business of Cirque,” Girard says. Going into Radio City, the creators were sensitive to the show being labeled a “Broadway Cirque.”

“Two years before we opened in New York, we were working under the premise that we had to be ourselves,” Girard says. “We didn’t want to look like Broadway, we don’t want to be anyone else.”

“Zarkana” also is “a louder show than the others,” Girard says. “We’re screaming the identity a little more.”

The creators aren’t saying flat out that Elton John was their first choice for the soundtrack. But they do say they found Littlemore as a referral from the pop and rock legend.

John is known to check out almost every new album released and became a champion of Littlemore’s band, Empire of the Sun. Working as half the electronica duo called Pnau, Littlemore remixed John’s catalog for the album “Good Morning to the Night,” which shot to the top of the British charts.

“I guess they wanted the youth thing,” says the self-effacing 34-year-old, who nonetheless says he has “always been interested in more theatrical kind of approaches to sound.”

Good thing, as Littlemore’s role evolved from songwriter to composer after the decision to ditch the English lyrics. The music “could have gone much more youth-oriented, but it would lose the mysticism. And it really is a backdrop to a show,” Littlemore says. “At times it can take over like a wave, but it has to support and embrace what’s there.”

The English lyrics were frustrating the audience, Roy believes. “People were trying to follow a story that is not that important, so they were confused and worried that they’re missing something.”

Cirque’s president, Daniel Lamarre, says the change was a matter of “listening to the public, and the public saying, ‘This is not Cirque du Soleil. Because in Cirque du Soleil, they don’t have a language.’

“People don’t want us to talk in any language,” Lamarre adds. “We’re an international organization. We’re a citizen of the world.”

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at
mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.