KOOZA

The return to the reality has never been more painful. Only once before in my life had I strived to stay in the imaginary world and I definitely never thought that it could happen again. After two hours sitting on the verge of my chair, empathizing with the main character of Cirque Du Soleil show KOOZA I was carelessly thrown out into the cold grey London streets. And then I thought that my life will never be the same again. 

I left Norwich early in the morning, expecting an interesting day in London: with long walks around parks, unique atmosphere of my beloved Covent Garden, new faces, flamboyant characters, all that is worth living for. Everything was as I expected: afternoon coffee with a friend, amazing street performances, a mixture of feelings and sounds of Covent Garden and an early evening in a cosy bar. Then it was a time for me to depart on a journey through the jungles of London’s tube towards the Unknown, towards a show that received so many favourable reviews that it obviously could not be just better than average. Now, looking back, I can say that at 19.30 on 3 February, I as I knew myself ceased to exist. 

As soon as I and a couple of hundred people more crossed the threshold of Royal Albert Hall we entered new world - a world of art and mystery. The fairy-tale began as soon as we were seated at our places: ballerinas started teaching kids the very basic steps, clowns were loudly arguing with each other, a random lady was running around telling everyone eager to listen that her son is an artist of Cirque du Soleil and that she was so proud of him. 

Then, in a second everything and everyone calmed down as if following the instructions of an invisible magic wand. The silence set in the theatre just to be broken in a second with music accompanying the appearance of the main personage of the story - The Innocent trying to fly his kite. Then everyone was lazily watching the act, sceptically making hypothesis on how the story could develop. Everything changed with the arrival of a mysterious parcel, delivered to the Innocent by a mail man. In a couple of seconds, the whole theatre was blown away with the boy into the mysterious world, guided by the witty Trickster who was teaching us the rules of conduct in this new reality simultaneously playing with the audience just like a cat plays with a mouse. 

This new world was amazing; its inhabitants could not be much different from what we see in our daily lives. One would travel through the Kingdom of Fools towards the riddles of the Innocent’s subconscious only to be left in a peculiar version of a hell. It was a frenzy of colours, sounds and emotions that carried the audience away from their lives, thoughts, problems. It was a fairy-tale we were kindly allowed to enter, and which abruptly ended leaving us and the Innocent with what we had before: the Innocent - with the kite, us - with our thoughts. 

Having spent two hours on the edge of the seats, forgetting to breath, not even blinking not to miss a second of the journey, we were asked to leave the home of magic. The doors opened and we saw the grey streets of London.