If you get a front-row seat at Le Rêve, be prepared for a night of Cirque du Soleil meets Gallagher. All the seats in this watery theater-in-the-round are good, but patrons at sea level are going to be soaked by the end of the evening, without benefit of towels or declassé plastic.
Created by Franco Dragone, the man behind Mystere and O and Celine Dion's A New Day, the production's narrative varies on which you believe: the show's program or a press release. The first describes Mephistopheles fighting angels for the soul of Everyman. The press release tells of Average Joe (named Wayne in the show, the actor's real first name) caught in a tug-of-war between Morpheus, god of sleep, who wants to show him the "murkier realms of the subconscious" and a quartet of comedic angels who just want him to be happy.
This confusion as to what the multimillion-dollar show is about is the key problem.
If we are to accept the Satan vs. God story, it is a failure. The actor playing Satan/Morpheus does an admirable job, strolling and wading about the often-submerged stage, looking regally evil. But in both the 21st century and Rêve, we have to ask: Where is God? Is He the old man we rarely see? Or is He invisibly omnipresent, manifesting His presence through the many angels, some breathtaking, swooping through the air? And where is the struggle? The quartet of clowns, who interrupt the show's pacing too often, don't point Wayne toward a beatific life—not when prancing around in tutus and sexually teasing one of an army of incredibly sculpted male performers.
But if seen through a Jungian prism, it makes more sense, as Morpheus leads Wayne into nightmares (wonderfully illustrated by a group of shapely female legs poking out of the water, then joined by a monster's limbs) while the clowns pull him into pleasant dreams. It also makes the scene of Wayne rising roofward at the end in a bed more understandable.
The acrobatics, both grounded and airborne, are terrific but nothing anyone who has seen a Cirque show won't have seen before. Much like Dragone's shifting vision, then, this theatergoing experience depends on perspective, making one man's collection of dreams another's collection of imperfections.