James Andrews

I am a huge fan of Cirque du Soleil. For many years I have tried to see as many shows as possible as they have come through the Boston area. I even got to see La Nouba at Disney World in Florida, which is one of the shows that does not travel around. I have enjoyed them all immensely. Today my wife treated me to ZED. This is one of the non traveling shows and it is hosted at Tokyo Disney.

As with most Cirques ZED starts out with 2 clowns, that wander the amphitheater harrassing members of the audience, and doing silly things. We were in the first row stage left all the way in the corner. The clowns did there thing, and one was even hiding under the stage near us, we knew he was there, there was no surprising us. The show starts off with the 2 clowns opening a very large storybook, then a very dramatic start to the show begins. The way they drew the curtain open. The main character ZED’s entrance which scared the day lights out of me. I thought for sure something had gone wrong, but it hadn’t. With the curtains drawn it revealed a steam punkish kind of set, which was pretty cool.

All the acts were wonderful. Very well performed with only a couple acrobatic mis-steps, but I expect that, they do this every day, sometimes twice, that’s a lot of hard physical work. The last act was not interesting to me, but I do know that it’s physically hard to do.

I found out that Japanese don’t usually give standing ovations. I don’t know why, but I was standing up clapping, and a few other audience members joined Miho and I. The performers really appreciated it. Some came and shook our hands, and gave us high fives. It was very cool to have them interact with us.

If you are in Tokyo, and haven’t seen ZED, it’s a good time, and you should try to go. As usual it was wonderful. I’ll give it 5 of 5 juggling balls.d