In typical Cirque du Soleil fashion, the show begins while the audience is still gathering. Our guide for the evening, "John," greets the audience as they come through the door, playing with their hair, stealing their tickets, eating their popcorn, and generally causing a nuisance. He is followed by a troupe of characters dressed head-to-toe in white, hooded suits. Of course this group picks an unwilling volunteer from the audience, takes him backstage and brings him out dressed as one of them. John harasses him a little and sends him back to his seat. As the house lights go dim, John takes the stage and plays snippets of songs on an old transistor radio - snippets of songs from previous Cirque productions, at which he sneers and turns up his nose. He reads us our instructions for the evening - no smoking, no pictures, and the like - and then leads us through this incredible story for the next two hours.

The show opens on the young girl at home with her parents seated in typical family pose. The father reads the paper, the mother stares vacantly into space, Zoë tries to entertain herself and engage her parents. A knock at the door brings a character straight from a Magritte painting - a headless man, a Quidam, carrying an umbrella, who drops his hat in the center of this family scene. Thunder rolls, lightning flashes, and the family is carried away in one of the most amazing feats to occur under the Big Top. The entire ceiling of the tent is covered in a track that lifts characters and set pieces to the stage and carries them off. In blissful ignorance, the parents are carried off still in their chairs, seemingly unaware of what is taking place around them.

At the same time, our young heroine's guides to this fantastical world are introduced - John, who we have already met, and and Fritz, an always-smiling, impish character. These two cohorts carry the young girl through adventure after adventure...

Text written by T. Clay Buck, as published in the “Fascination! Newsletter”.