Joy reverberates through Cirque’s ‘Echo’
Cirque du Soleil’s Echo plays through Jan. 18 under the big top at Oracle Park. Photos by me
The venerable circus juggernaut Cirque du Soleil seems to be taking a new approach to its shows: let people rediscover Cirque on their own. I tend to be a person who knows the big-ticket shows that are in town, but until I was on a Muni train going by Oracle Park and saw the blue-and-white-striped tents, I had no idea Cirque was in town with its 20th big-top show, Echo (which had its premiere in April 2023). I hadn’t seen a billboard or an ad; none of my connections had so much as mentioned it on social media, and if I had seen a Google ad pop up, I very successfully ignored it. Our paper of record wrote about the show in February of 2025, a good nine months before its arrival, so I had completely forgotten its impending arrival.
I bought tickets because I’m a completist. I’ve seen just about every touring Cirque show, and though some years I’ve fought the Cirque fatigue and had reached my limit of French Canadian circus tweeness, I’m still chasing that thrill I got from the very first Cirque show I saw, Quidam, in 1997 in Oakland.
Echo set and prop design is by Es Devlin (who is also credited with the original idea for the show) and costume design is Nicolas Vaudelet.
Echo is a beguiling surprise – delightful in its simplicity and execution, stunning in its beauty, and even the clowns are funny (never a given in a Cirque show). To my mind, the star of the show is Tony Award-winner Es Devlin (The Lehman Trilogy), the set and prop designer who also sparked the original idea for the show. Her concept was that the entire show revolves around an enormous cube, which is taken apart, put back together, climbed on, flown around, projected upon and performed within. Costume designer Nicolas Vaudelet uses color sparingly and effectively, opting to create a world dominated by human animals that look like they’re made out of paper.
Devlin’s focus on the architectural smorgasbord provided by the giant block gives focus and also a constant source of surprise to the two-hour show, and it also helps writer/director Mukhtar Omar Sharif Mukhtar lend the show a distinctive vibe that’s more fun than frilly. There’s not much nonsense here, which is refreshing.
Two moments stand out for me: the Act 1 finale emergence of a gargantuan red marionette puppet from the cube and a simple tableaux that ends the evening with the revolving cube revealing the cast, standing still within the cube, looking absolutely magnificent in their costumes.
Of the acrobatic acts – all of which are captivating – the teeter boards were astonishing in their gravity-defying precision, as was the troupe of acrobats performing a rousing act that fuses “banquine and Korean Cradle” (I don’t know exactly what those things are, but the act itself is thrilling). Inside the cube, two performers (Taras Hoi and Evgeny Vasilenko) perform a slackwire act that is as powerful as it is graceful.
Special shout-out to clowns Clément Malin and Thomas Gaskin, known in the show as Double Trouble. Their crowd work was admirable, but their centerpiece act, involving an impossibly high tower of cardboard boxes, was both exciting and funny. I have, in the past, dreaded Cirque clowns, but these two had charm and sass to spare.
There’s a joyousness to Echo that has been missing for me in the past. The last Cirque show I reviewed was the return of Koozå in 2024 (read my review here), and that was classic Cirque – aggressive in its thrills and its enigmatic design. This show feels like light in the woods, a respite from the onslaught to delight and revel in being together amid something that is much bigger that us. In this particular case that something is a mammoth cube, but that cube brings a whole new (and welcome) dimension to the Cirque world.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Cirque du Soleil’s Echo continues through Jan. 18 at Oracle Park in San Francisco. Running time: 125 minutes (with one 25-minute intermission). Visit cirquedusoleil.com for tickets and information.
