Theater Review : The Usual, Unusual Cirque : Strange Beings and a Surreal Setting, but There’s Less Derring-Do

Cirque du Soleil is back in town with its new show, “Alegria,” under the big top at Santa Monica Pier. AT&T; is producing, and, since the company makes its way rather prominently into the show’s introduction, I thought I’d stick it in my introduction, as well. The opening-night crowd on Thursday was half expecting a raffle for free phones by the time the show finally started.

The postmodern, Montreal-based circus first stormed L.A. in 1987 with its new blend of acrobatics, contortionists, hip percussive music, strange costumes and plumes, sophisticated lighting, absence of elephant manure. On its raked, double spherical stage (a nod to the circus rings of old, perhaps) and generally surreal setting, performers display the distinctive Cirque attitude--they look like aliens who refuse to tell you whether they’re benign or hostile but who expect to be admired nonetheless. They create another, parallel universe that is peopled by, well, weird circus performers.

This year’s version contains less derring-do than previous Cirques, although there is a tumbling act where men in gold mesh seem to traverse the entire stage horizontally, and a trapeze act featuring men in aviator caps who perform at the tippy top of the big top (these acts became known among my co-watchers as the “golden bounders” and the “prancing eunuchs”).

If “Alegria” has a theme, it looks to be ethereal children. (The creators, director Franco Dragone and artistic director Gilles Ste-Croix, said in the San Francisco Chronicle that the show was inspired by the recent upheavals in the former Soviet Union and South Africa and is about the inevitable replacement of the elders by the young. But you wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t told you.) There are some fascinating acts that might make you wonder about the child labor laws in Mongolia and China.

One act features a tiny, smiling doll who maneuvers her way across a portable tightrope that is being held up by a slightly older, totally unsmiling child who intently balances a long pole on her shoulder. They look like China’s version of Louise and Baby June from “Gypsy.”

The tiny contortionists from Mongolia, Ulziibayar Chimed and Nomin Tseveendorj, look like twins but aren’t. In another era they would have been introduced as “the wonders of the Orient!” and they are quite remarkable, if eerily placid, as they wave their limbs around their heads like spider legs. As they explore the mysterious shapes that the human body can take, a sad clown on stilts wearing a Rembrandt hat and coat looks on, somehow thickening the mystery.

“Alegria” features the addition of songster Francesca Gagnon, who looks like a cross between Madonna and Connie Stevens in sparkly Martian ears. She manages to be quite chic in a corset, cage skirt and white hair that looks as if birds put it together out of twigs and spaghetti. Even if you understand French, you can never make out a word she’s singing, except “Alegria,” which you hear over and over again. Her doppelganger/backup singer Isabelle Corradi is dressed similarly but all in black and is never allowed to get too close to the audience.

Unfortunately, Cirque has never recovered from the loss of the incredible clown David Shiner, who went on to appear with Bill Irwin in “Fool Moon.” But there are a couple of good routines by Russian clown Slava Polunin, who has a touching affair with a coat and hat on a coatrack. He also gets blown mightily across the stage, a la Buster Keaton in “Steamboat Bill Jr.”

Some of the other acts--a Fabio manque aerialist who performs with a huge silver cube, a flabby strong man, a flame thrower/eater--left this viewer cold.

Christian Racoux, the master of ceremonies, is a hunchbacked, pot-bellied bird man who cares for his flock, what I like to call the corps du Soleil, with interesting ambivalence. Their weird masks and scraggly hair and their strange relation to the performers are mesmerizing in their own, impenetrable way. That’s the way of the Cirque du Soleil.

* “Alegria,” Santa Monica Pier, Tuesday-Thursday, 8 p.m., Friday, 6 and 9:30 p.m., Saturday, 4:30 and 8:30 p.m., Sunday, 1 and 5 p.m. Indefinitely. $13.50-$39.50. (310) 458-7773. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.