Cirque Du Soleil Producers Target Broadway Audiences With ‘Paramour’

Cirque du Soleil is making an aggressive effort to crack the Broadway market with Paramour, a show that will, according to the company, integrate stage actors with familiar acrobats to tell a Hollywood-set story about a “young poet forced to choose between love and art.”

Cirque announced Wednesday that Paramour is set to open at the Lyric Theatre in New York in 2016.

Cirque will spend about $25 million to produce Paramour, according to Variety. While this amount is expensive for a Broadway show, it’s not over-the-top for Cirque when compared with the company’s previous productions.

Paramour marks the first time Cirque has gone after the Broadway market, with producers of the show aiming to give the production more of a narrative than traditional Cirque offerings. While the company has found success in New York with tour stops of big-tent shows such as Amaluna, it hasn’t yet carved out a permanent foothold in the city the way the company has in Las Vegas or Montreal.

Will Paramour be a hit, a home run, or a strike out when it hits Broadway? We’ll have to wait until 2016.