Mystere

So last night we ventured out to see Mystere, one of about 368,000 Cirque du Soleil shows performing in town right now. The conceit of this one is that French-Canadian acrobats are re-enacting the dreams of a demented baby. Baby is played first by a cooing spotlight in a carriage, and later by a woman into infantilism.

As you can imagine, those French-Canadian circus babies have scary, frightening dreams involving giant inflatable snails on a turntable stage, muscular men sweating buckets while positioning their heads into each others' crotches, and trampline women dressed in rainbow-colored pregnancy suits replete with strap-on dildos.

Seated next to us by coincidence was one of my coworkers. Jenn thought he was drunk, but I later explained that he was quite in character, as I'd dealt with him earlier in the day, when he wore his clubwear into the office and disabled the ceiling fluorescents, opting instead for mood lighting he'd brought in. I can best describe the guy as a ladies' man of indeterminate Turkish-ish origins, drenched in bad cologne, shirt unbuttoned down to his navel, and hair piled high with gel to mimic what one would wear to a dance club circa 1997. He kept screaming, "NO WAY!" as a reaction to everything that happened onstage. Example: "The muscular guy lifted the other muscular guy with one arm while twisting himself into a ball, and then put his face in the other guy's crotch?! NO WAY!"

Apparently the muscle guys' act was lifted out of Zumanity, where it was deemed too erotic to exist in a musical about gay men having sex while being beaten by dominatrixes. Instead, Zumanity was changed so that muscle men instead fight each other in a cage and then make out, and Mystere got got the balancing act, only now the muscle guys wear pants instead of g-strings. Got that?

Oh, French Canada. Full of wonder, and whimsy, and colorful homoerotic infantilism. When will you declare your independence and set up your own nation dedicated to the quadruple ideals of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Weirdness?