Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Twas the Night Before…, presented as part of the Kravis on Broadway series, arrives with all the trimmings one expects from a holiday spectacle. It is festive, colorful, family friendly, and polished in a quintessential one would expect from a world-renowned troupe like Cirque. Yet beneath the glitter, the show’s story is loosely sketched that, if you were to strip away every bauble related to Christmas, replace it with Alice in Wonderland or any other whimsical world, and very little would change. Whether this is a virtue or a missed opportunity depends entirely on what you want from your holiday outing.
For me, it left a faint sense of emptiness, especially when compared to recent productions that felt deeply intentional. ‘Twas the Night Before…, on the other hand, uses the Clement Clarke Moor poem more as a springboard than a foundation. The characters drawn from the verse appear, but only in passing. The emotional beats are broad and brisk, and the narrative exists mostly to tie together a succession of circus acts that could be rearranged without altering the audience’s understanding of what is happening.
None of this is to suggest that circus arts are in any way lesser than more traditional theatrical forms. In fact, the visceral reaction they inspire, that sharp inhale and gasp, is its own unique form of narrative. We seek that shock, that thrill, in the same way we voluntarily walk into a horror movie, strap into a rollercoaster, or jump out of an airplane. Here, we marvel, too. The human towers (Nicolás Nieto Teusa, Richard Anderson Sanchez, Yan Rocha Szuecs, Gabriel Alves de Souza, Felipe Zuluaga, Lucas Gonçalves de Melo, and Feng Tian) stack bodies with such improbable lightness. The aerialists, Sara Knauer and Roman Tomanov, slice through the space above the audience with a clarity and grace that feel almost celestial. A lyra hoop reimagined to resemble a rolling hotel trolley, transforms a familiar apparatus into something entirely new; Emilia Dawiec climbs and suspends herself upon it with implausible ingenuity.
The roller skaters, Asia & Dylan Medini, deliver a fast, spinning duet that toes the line between joyous choreography and tightly calculated risk. Their speed alone is enough to raise the blood pressure of anyone watching. The father character, portrayed by Teo Spencer, creates a tender moment through a hanging, working lamp as a makeshift aerial silk. And the show’s central figure, an acrobatic cyclist, named Isabella (Alexane Leclerc), commands the stage with her bike. Her calm smile and poised balance create a subtle narrative of a young person literally learning how to move.
One act that stood out above the rest, and easily became my favorite of the night, was the diabolo performance by Ho-Li Tsao, Pei-I Lin, Shao-Wei Hsiao, and Tzu-Yu Juan. The level of coordination and concentration required is already formidable, but the artists elevated the routine into something almost hypnotic. Each toss, catch, and orbit of the spinning spool seemed to defy the limits of timing, and the performers executed it all with a rhythmic precision that synced beautifully with the music. What impressed me most was the effortless showmanship woven into such a technically demanding discipline, even involving two members of the crowd to join them on stage in some unique audience participation.
