Circus of love

Cirque du Soleil is so terrific an organization of visionaries, creators, organizers, producers, artists, acrobats and showmen that it has no less than five productions currently being presented in Las Vegas.

Why, that’s like having five musicales running at the same time on Broadway or at the West End in London. In order of longevity, these are Mystere, playing at Treasure Island, O at Bellagio, Ka at MGM Grand, Zumanity at New York – New York Hotel & Casino, and the latest which debuted early this year, Love, at the Mirage.

If I had five nights in Vegas and had hit some jackpot on the first, I’d see all five by turns, maybe even do a matinee repeat or two. I understand that O plays on a water theme of sorts, so that a giant aquarium figures onstage. Ka explores the fire element, primal ethnicity and all that, while Zumanity is quite erotic.

In Vegas, anything quite like anything is transformed to something else, of course – to everything from in-your-face spectacle to a dazzling class act that’s as lavish as all-get-out. No subtleties in this town that used to be Sin City, but has since acquired more than just a veneer of clean, wholesome fun to gain a family destination ISO.

Only the Cirque du Soleil, founded in Canada 20 years ago, can proudly lay claim to any subtlety, here in Vegas. Its raison d’etre, the reinvention of the circus, makes that possible. Elegance of concept meets up with exquisite execution, transects and transcends pure showtime to make an impact on the senses, the imagination, and the spirit.

With Love, the Cirque, which also travels around the world to cast a spell on generations, has found another métier: the ode, tribute or hommage to fellow artists. This time, in place of its own enchanting musical scores to accompany a 100-minute production, the Cirque falls back on Beatles music and nothing but.

Well, falls back is probably inappropriate. Get Back may be more apt. And Jojo turns into juju extravaganza, with the characteristic high-flying acts and dazzling array of acrobatic stunts enhanced by hi-tech innovations.

The score for Love utilizes some 30 Beatles numbers – all familiar, of course – rearranged by Sir George Martin and his son Giles as musical directors. Symphonic synergy is further brought up to speed with fabulous collaboration with the Cirque’s team of millennial magicians.

Guy Laliberté, who is billed as guide and show concept creator, recalls that the Beatles ushered a large part of the world into the universal realm of love and friendship over 40 years ago. And now their music still lifts us all to heights of grandeur upon synchronization with visual elements.

Dominic Champagne, director, writer, show concept creator, reminds the audience: "All love needs is you." Make that us, seated on sectioned tiers occasionally separated by transparent curtains that draw back to unify everyone into a commune of delightful appreciation.

Sound effects are heard from speakers imbedded at the back of every seat. It makes for total immersion into total theatre, at once riveting and ritualistic as it is state-of-the-art package of sheer entertainment.

The triumvirate of show concept creators includes Gilles Ste-Croix, who is specifically billed as director of creation. Yes, these are gods of the spectacle who never seem to rest, not on any seventh day nor any season of advent. It is a continuing adventure of conceptual and thematic design that they’ve embarked on, as exemplified by this latest production that seethes with nostalgia, psychedelia, and ecstatica.

Making it a quartet of visionaries, just like our beloved John, Paul, George and Ringo, is Chantal Tremblay, associate director of creation. Then there’s the motley assembly, an army, actually, of avant-garde artists: choreographers, costumer directors, theatre and set designers, lighting designers, acrobatic rigging and acrobatic performance designers, sound designers, and other masters that help orchestrate the show as props, projection, puppet and make-up designers.

If they were to take over the United Nations General Assembly hall, why, we’d all embark on a fabulous odyssey of peace love flowers happiness, and magic, and enchantment, every day of our lives, through a long and winding road right across the universe.

The Cirque’s Love also serves as a narrative, flashbacking to the Fab Four’s musical emancipation in Liverpool, which is first shown suffering the travails of wartime. It’s Eleanor Rigby status for a nation of shopkeepers led by a queen through the quotidian habit of tea. Of course the Beatles’ intake of their kind of tea leads to their kind of Revolution.

I Want to Hold Your Hand. Can’t Buy Me Love. A white Volkswagen Beetle rolls along on center stage, with the plate number LMV 28IF. And this spectator can’t help wondering what the code stands for, even as we move on to the haunting Because and the playful For the Benefit of Mr. Kite.

The Blackbird number is a stunner. Wretched-looking flying creatures, in black and with broken wings, keep crashing to the floor. A white-robed scientist as ringmaster implores them to "learn to fly... you were only waiting for this moment to arrive." He declaims the poetry of the Beatles, repeats the lines melodramatically, as he urges and pushes up the creatures back into space, until they do arrive at that "moment to be free."

Ah, lovely, loverly.

Something offers an ultra-feminine pas de quatre performed in the air, with lithe, lissome bodies in white gowns in mesmeric, moving tableaux, as they cavort in rapture and take turns descending towards the single worshipful man on center-stage.

Image projection on diaphanous screens, cheeky banter among the Beatles as their silhouettes are flashed on screen, roller-bladers crisscrossing between two opposing ramps and trampoline artists conducting leaps and bounds atop and over towering set structures... All done with precision and chutzpah. Then the slowdown for She’s Leaving Home. Followed by a rousing ensemble parade for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The white Beetle is eventually dismantled into a dozen parts at a number’s end. Another one takes its place, of bronzed, open grillwork that looks something like a gothic Gabby Barredo sculpture.

Octopus’s Garden is picaresque and fantastic in one go, with aerialists floating up and down as jellyfish, squid, shrimps and other magnificently re-created sea creatures.

A humongous white sheet gets drawn up by a four-poster bed in brass that lifts along a posse of kids, draping the sheet over nearly the entire audience. And in one fell swoop the bed descends into the center pit. Whoosh, the sheet is gone.

Ah, magic. The melodic magic, too, of Strawberry Fields Forever, Here Comes the Sun, and of course Yesterday and Hey Jude.

Soon enough the final number reminds us that "All You Need is Love," with everyone getting to their feet and clapping and singing and exulting along.

The blurbs from the inspiration to all of this music couldn’t have been more spot-on.

"The idea of the magic of Cirque du Soleil coming together with the magic of The Beatles’ music is a very exciting one." – Paul McCartney

"The Beatles, Cirque du Soleil, Las Vegas. All you need is LOVE! Peace and love." – Ringo Starr

"The Beatles and Cirque. I think it’s a great combination. The Beatles’ agile mind and Cirque’s agile body." – Yoko Ono

"From a friendship and a wellspring of creativity emerged LOVE." – Olivia Harrison.

We miss out on Yellow Submarine, The Long and Winding Road, Across the Universe, Golden Slumbers, and many more refrains from all our years past. But let it be. We have shared in the magic, and it is incandescent, a mirage reached and savored, held and fondled many times over in the heart – as confetti drops all over our heads and rekindles the entrancing memory tour.

Bravo to the Beatles and Cirque du Soleil! Bravo, LOVE!