Varakai had very rich staging and stunning acrobatics. Totem was weaker in both regards. On staging, it usually had just one thing going on at a time (not much interesting background action) and they did much more of the show on the back portion of the stage. As for the acrobatics, the actual feats seemed a little less visually engaging and challenging to me in this show. There were some good acts, to be sure -- the guys doing stunts off the tops of very tall poles and the ones doing jumps, flips, and spins off of what were effectively very skinny trampolines impressed me. (Even though in the first case the tethers, which were clearly visible, were doing a fair bit of the work; they weren't just safety measures.) I'm sure the trapeze/rings aerials were technically very good, but they didn't grab me.

Most of their attempts at comedy fell flat for me, but one bit was very cute: they had actors in ape (etc) costumes lined up to depict that famous "evolution of hominids" drawing, and at the head of the line they added a guy in a business suit carrying a briefcase and talking on a cell phone. Not all progress is improvement. :-)

The lighting was effective (as last time), and they used the ceiling too (to project stars). The costumes were a little less flamboyant for the most part but worked well in context. Having the creatures that just crawled out of the primordial water in swim trunks was cute.

Our seats, for all that they were in the second of four pricing tiers, were very bad in one respect: you couldn't tell this from the seating chart, but we were behind a large post that supported lights (and possibly the tent itself; couldn't tell). This was a serious impediment to the stuff done on the back of the stage (that "backstage" area behind the round center section, for those familiar with their tent setup), though it didn't block most of the round stage. In addition, this put us directly across from a similar pole, and several times we had a spotlight aimed straight at our eyes. Not downgrading the seats along the "spokes" behind the posts is very bad form, especially in combination with all the other ways they've found to boost revenue (like disingenuous "service fees" on ticket sales). If we go to another Cirque show we'll now know that the seating chart has these kinds of gotchas, but for $100 a ticket we should have had clear sight lines without asking. (The tent was full, so moving at the intermission didn't seem to be an option.)

Cirque has many shows and most of them seem to be well-regarded. I've only seen two and I found Totem by far the weaker one. If you're considering your first Cirque show, you might want to hold out for something better. If you've seen them before and would enjoy them even "dialed down" a bit, then this is a reasonable show to go see.

Or, to sum up, "eh".

Edit: followup on the bad seats.