Review: Cirque du Soleil Hatches Up OVO

After PARAMOUR, last season's ambitious but underwritten attempt to incorporate their world-class circus arts performers into a book and score Broadway musical, Cirque du Soleil returns to town doing what they do best.

OVO, playing a brief stint at the Barclays Center, is light on plot - something to do with a giant egg that wreaks havoc on an insect ecosystem - and the production by writer, director and choreographer Deborah Colker speeds briskly through a gasp-inducing lineup of human flyers, tumblers, jugglers, contortionists and clowns, dressed in designer Liz Vandal's fun and colorful insect get-ups.

With composer/music director Berna Ceppas setting a new age-y mood, the international company includes a quartet of foot jugglers who, dressed as red ants, literally play with their food; maneuvering oversized slices of kiwi and ears of corn, as well as each other.

A pair of butterflies performs an elegant pas de deux on aerial straps, a muscular dragonfly demonstrates impressive body control with hand balancing, a charismatic firefly keeps multiple spinning diabolos air bound and a trio of spiders bend their bodies in seemingly impossible ways.

There are acrobatic fleas flipping across the stage, an ensemble of crickets leaping by trampoline up a high wall and, for comic relief, there's an attention-seeking fly getting to know a ladybug who's looking for love.

Those sitting up front during the charming spectacle will find themselves interacting with an assortment of performers before each of the two acts, and perhaps get accidentally caught by an errant butterfly net.

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