Stage REview

KURIOS: CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

Written and directed by Michel Laprise. Presented by Cirque du Soleil. At the Big Top, Suffolk Downs, East Boston, through July 10. Tickets $35-$170, 877-924-7783, www.cirquedusoleil.com/kurios

At bottom, what Cirque du Soleil has been selling for more than three decades is one of the rarest commodities in our increasingly jaded, seen-it-all age: astonishment.

It takes several forms. First is our immediate, in-the-moment, open-mouthed, head-shaking, “How the hell did they do that?’’ reaction to the specific feats pulled off by Cirque performers. Then comes a kind of private wonderment as we calculate how many hundreds of hours of rigorous practice must have gone into perfecting these routines, and the mental discipline and intensity of focus required to execute them successfully time and again.

Behind it all, though, is a wider, bone-deep, almost primal awe born of the fact that our fellow human beings are capable of transcending ordinary mortal limits. That is what keeps audiences coming back time and again to the touring shows presented by Cirque du Soleil, despite the occasional underwhelming letdown. Cirque’s “Kurios: Cabinet of Curiosities,’’ which has pitched its blue-and-yellow striped tent at Suffolk Downs, is no letdown.

Sensory feast is more like it. Written and directed by Michel Laprise, “Kurios’’ conjures an entrancing world that is equal parts steampunk fantasia, “Alice in Wonderland,’’ Federico Fellini, and Jules Verne, with traces of “The Wizard of Oz’’ also visible in the mix. That world is brought to vaulting life by dozens of aerialists, acrobats, and other performers from 15 countries who manage to find loopholes in the laws of gravity, physics, and probability while using their bodies to deliver a geometry lesson.

As usual with a Cirque production, the story line of “Kurios’’ exists largely as a pretext for the marvels that unfold, though it’s a pretty sturdy conceptual framework as these things go. It’s the late 19th century, and a frazzled-looking chap called a “Seeker’’ is in his laboratory, determined to find a way into the alternate universe he is convinced exists. When the Seeker’s massive curio cabinet opens up, it proves to contain a hidden world populated with outlandish characters who are — what are the odds? — equipped with major circus skills.

Which they proceed to demonstrate to the Seeker and to us. There’s much to see and savor.

In the “Russian Cradle Duo’’ sequence, Andrei Kalesnikau and Anny Laplante enact a high-speed drama of peril-and-rescue from a dozen feet off the ground: He swings her at wild angles, only to have her feet land on his cupped hands, after which he sends her somersaulting through the air. Next to occupy the air is Anne Weissbecker and her bicycle, which she straddles and spins and then pedals upside down.

Remarkable as these and other feats are, they’re but a prelude to the true show-stopper of the show’s first half: a chair-balancing act in which Andrii Bondarenko suspends himself atop a half-dozen chairs, only to further up the ante when he and other performers end up competing against a parallel-universe version of themselves who are dangling from high above the stage. This routine can’t be adequately described; it has to be seen to be disbelieved.

“Kurios’’ stays aloft after intermission as seven performers slingshot themselves skyward, trampoline-style, from a long net. Then two aerialists, clutching straps with one hand, soar in graceful, intersecting trajectories high above us, the freedom of flight almost palpable in their swooping movements. Later, more than a dozen acrobats build human pyramids and send one another hurtling to the summit, their feet landing on the shoulders of the topmost performer.

There’s more, a lot more, but part of the appeal of “Kurios’’ is that the world of the show is rendered so painstakingly. The set design features two bulb-shaped cabinets, a large mechanical hand, and assorted gramophones, typewriters, and turbines. The stage is populated by oddball characters in evocative costumes: Nico the Accordion Man, Klara the telegraph of the invisible, and Mr. Microcosmos, who carries tiny performer Antanina Satsura in his protruberant belly.

“Kurios’’ makes plenty of room for earthbound wonders, such as the “Theater of Hands,’’ in which Nico Baixas uses only his fingers to tell a delightful tale. In one quite funny bit, clown Facundo Gimenez presides over an “Invisible Circus’’ that slyly subverts the conventions of the kinds of circuses we’re used to seeing. Juggler Gabriel Beaudoin turns a somersault and somehow manages to keep his act intact, and Chih-Min Tuan makes yo-yos dance and whirl like flashing meteors.

All in all, “Kurios’’ is pretty — no other word will do — astonishing.

KURIOS: CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

Written and directed by Michel Laprise. Presented by Cirque du Soleil. At the Big Top, Suffolk Downs, East Boston, through July 10. Tickets $35-$170, 877-924-7783, www.cirquedusoleil.com/kurios

Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com.