NEW BALANCE Kooza’s chair-stacking acrobat flexes his muscle.

It may have started as a group of humble street buskers in Montreal (P.T. Barnum qui?), but Cirque du Soleil’s unstoppable global circus monopoly now bears the undeniable stamp of Microsoft: Their intentions may be earnest (both operate impressive charitable arms), but in the end American capitalism is the ringmaster, and he doesn’t want any other acts in the ring.

Kooza, among Cirque’s most recent traveling tented spectacles, has been pitched as a return to the company’s unvarnished circus roots. The machinery is front and center. The simple set design is composed of a huge, shape-shifting curtain and a vaguely Indian, two-tiered mobile bandstand. The usual surreal narrative—as in the melancholic, Fellini-esque Corteo, seen here two years ago—has been scaled back. And there’s lots of audience-interactive clowning. The chameleonic rock score, accented with bits of Indian raga and swing jazz, and ingenious costumes (notably a live-rat fur coat that ought to pass muster with PETA) are about the only high gloss on display.

Shiner presumably sent in the clowns, but stuffed with sophomoric scat gags and Moe, Larry and Curly slapstick, they feel like budget-conscious filler, not a return to Cirque’s original commedia-dell’arte abstractions. When the mighty Cirque du Soleil resorts to a costumed dog lifting its leg in the front row and fart jokes (albeit inside a pantomimed box), you sense it’s just going through the motions.

But what motions they are. Many of the same acts (even the giant, two-cylindered “Wheel of Death,” a terrifying contraption on which two acrobats orbit and defy gravity) can be seen at Navy Pier’s Cirque Shanghai for less money. But the preternatural skill and athleticism of these elite circus studs are unparalleled. And if the gymnast executing an iron cross on his tower of chairs doesn’t take home gold in Beijing, we cry foul.