Cirque du Soleil’s Paramour, the international circus troupe's first show created expressly for Broadway, begins a four-performance mini-hiatus August 22 to make “creative changes.”
Producers canceled the August 22, 24, 25 and 31 performances.
The acrobatic musical about two rivals for the heart of a beautiful singer opened May 25 at the Lyric Theatre.
The production released a statement explaining, “True to our roots as street performers, our shows evolve over time to reflect feedback from our consumers and our creative team.”
Scott Ziegler, president and managing director of Cirque du Soleil, explained the process to Playbill.com. “All of our shows go through a process of reevaluation, refining and retooling after they open—every one, globally. It’s the nature of what we do.”
He compared the process to the traditional Broadway process of opening out of town and spending weeks making changes and doing rewrites before opening in New York. Paramour, however, did what is called “opening cold” on Broadway without a tryout period.
Other shows have taken breaks for rewrites, most recently Shuffle Along. Other shows have made change during the run, notably Hello, Dolly! which replaced some songs when Ethel Merman took over the lead.
“There will be some script changes, some rewrites. The show is doing a million [dollars] a week, so we’re happy. But we’re playing predominantly to people who are already Cirque du Soleil fans who know the Cirque brand. But we know that in order to connect with the theatre fans we need to give the characters more depth and dimension. We survey ticket buyers, we poll them in the auditorium itself and conduct focus groups, and we hear it there. And, obviously the reviews too. The sentiment is, gosh, if these characters could have a little more dimension and depth, we have the chance of running a very long time.”
A production spokesperson said ticket holders should seek refunds at the point of sale, but said that all who purchased tickets via Ticketmaster have been notified.
(Updated August 22, 2016)
