Insufficiently reverent clowns

I met an old aquantance of mine recently at a poker game. She had been very involved with the theatre at school and now reviewed off-broadway plays in New York. The last thing I saw performed live on a stage as the punningly named "O" at the Bellagio, but when I mentioned this to her she made a face and told me how much she detested Cirque de Soleil. I asked her why, and she said it was because Circus was meant to be irreverent, and Cirque was such a production that it corrupted that by demanding reverence from the audience. Moreover, the clown choreographer had done much better work (in her opinion) in his (her?) non-Cirque endeavours.

What an addled mind.