I got an e-mail in December before Christmas from my colleague, Simon, up in Montreal. Very simply it said, "I have a line on getting tickets for the Cirque du Soleil show 'The Beatles -Love' at The Mirage. Are you interested in going when we're in Las Vegas?"
I immediately shot back, "You bet!"
It turns out that a number of my other colleagues were also interested in going. So, my boss, Daniel, out of the goodness of his heart, popped for nine tickets in the second row for the 7 p.m. show on the Saturday night we arrived in Las Vegas. And even though we had an "in" to getting the tickets, they were still $170 dollars each. Yow!
How we had an "in" to the tickets is sort of a small world thing between my company and Cirque du Soleil. Some of you may remember my blog entry from last year regarding the Cirque du Soleil show "Delirium" coming to the Quad Cities. When Guy Laliberte started taking Cirque du Soleil on the road in the 80's, he hired a Montreal company by the name of Solotech to do lights and sound for the show. One of the co-owners of Solotech is a guy by the name of Andre Riendeau, who just happened to be a co-owner of my company for a number of years.
As Cirque du Soleil evolved, Solotech was instrumental in providing the high-tech sound and lighting that adds to the magic of the Cirque performance. And when Cirque began to have shows in Las Vegas, Solotech was hired to install the sound and lights in the theaters in which they performed. They eventually opened a separate Las Vegas office/warehouse a few years ago.
Solotech also was the company of choice for Celine Dion when she went on the road. When Caesar's Palace built the 4,000 seat Colosseum for Dion's "A New Day..." show, Solotech was called upon to provide the sound and lights for the venue. Andre told me there are 144 speakers in the Colosseum powered by about 150,000 watts of total power. I understand it sounds magnificent in there.
Andre is now in semi-retirement having sold his interest in Solotech to his partner a couple years ago, and he's in the process of being bought out of his shares in our company by my boss, Daniel. But we still have contacts with the Solotech people in both Montreal and Las Vegas. In fact, we used Solotech's warehouse to house our gear for CES before and after we showed the products at the Las Vegas Hilton this year.
So, in a nutshell, that's how we were able to get second row tickets on a Saturday night for Cirque du Soleil's "The Beatles - Love" show - even though we had to still pay face value for the seats.
The background of Cirque du Soleil's "The Beatles - Love" started with a meeting between George Harrison and Guy Laliberte nearly 8 years ago. The two wanted to collaborate on a Cirque show that featured Beatles tunes. After Harrison died a year later, negotiations soon began between Cirque du Soleil, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and the widows of John Lennon and Harrison - Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison.
During this time, MGM Mirage was looking to replace their top drawing show - Siegfried and Roy - after Roy Horn was attacked by a tiger during one of their shows in 2003. The company entered negotiations with Cirque du Soleil, the remaining Beatles and widows, and The Beatles holding company Apple Corps, Ltd.
Cirque du Soleil's Dominic Champagne wrote the initial script for "The Beatles - Love" and contacted George Martin, The Beatles producer, to remix a number of Beatles songs for the show. After getting permission from McCartney, Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, Martin and his son, Giles, went to work on a series of songs for the shows that included re-editing of songs, samples and outtakes from recording sessions. The subsequent sound track was made into an album and released in November 2006.
"The Beatles - Love" opened to preview audiences in June of 2006. McCartney and Starr, plus Lennon's and Harrison's widows attended the opening performance of the show on June 29, 2006 and all gave the show a hearty "thumbs up". The show has been playing to sold out audiences ever since.
The theater that houses "The Beatles - Love" was rebuilt from the old Siegfried and Roy theater. The seats are in the round and the farthest seat is only 90 feet from the front of the stage. The capacity of the theater is a shade over 2000 seats, each of which has a built in rear channel sound system in the headrest of the back of the seat. I didn't know that at first, but then Simon pointed it out to me after the show. I was trying to figure out how they could do surround information in a theater in the round. Simon told me, "The speakers were in the seats." Man, I'm telling you - it sounded unbelievable.
Like any Cirque du Soleil show, they feature what I read somewhere as a "wide-eyed every man" that seems to walk aimlessly around the stage during the show. Delirium had a guy like that, as well, and I could never figure out what his function was. Turns out that nearly every Cirque show features this type of character.
And like every Cirque show, there's a lot going on all at once during the opening sequences. Being close to the stage for a Cirque du Soleil show is not as good as sitting back. We were straining our necks up to see the aerial performers. And we also had to move our heads to see many of the projected images on screens that surrounded the theater.
There's actually a storyline to "The Beatles - Love" - it follows the early days of the members of the band growing up through World War II, getting together, becoming world famous, embracing meditation, and then the subsequent break-up. Interspersed through the show are the re-mastered songs by the Martin's, a lot of visual effects, great stunts and dancing, and a number of great aerial feats that Cirque's performers are famous for.
My favorite part of the show was when they wheeled out these huge sloping walls and a team of roller-bladers performed some amazing acrobatic skills to the tune of "Help!". I'd seen a clip of this in the past and it was even more impressive in person. Also, another segment I really liked were the trampolinist's performing to "Revolution". It was pretty damn cool.
I found this video on You Tube that gives a two minute "teaser" of "The Beatles - Love". It doesn't come close to capturing the experience live, but it does give you an idea as to what the show is about.
The show lasted just a shade over 90 minutes. There were some head-scratching moments - just as you normally find at most Cirque du Soleil shows. But overall, I have to give the experience and the show 4.75 stars out of five. I would go back to see it again, but the $170 price tag is a little too steep for an out of the pocket expenditure. Still, "The Beatles - Love" packs 'em in every night, so there's a lot of people who will fork over that kind of cash to see a great show.
Tom and I went with Marty and his girlfriend to this a year or so ago when we were in Las Vegas. It was great! You're right. There's a lot going on! It's tough to focus on one thing because something else is happening on stage.
Posted by: Anne Trennedy | January 21, 2008 at 12:38 PM