“Love”
Cirque du Soleil
OPEN RUN
Unlike VH1, Cirque du Soleil is never about the music. The
performance group that somehow turned the clown-and-acrobat circus
into an art succeeds because of the stunts onstage, not the musical
backdrop that paces the performance. In Cirque shows, music acts as
a metronome, an instrument of timing, and it’s fitting that
as the company’s productions have increased in grandeur,
their music has flattened. It comes as a surprise that
“Love,” the newest Cirque production that opened last
weekend at the Mirage hotel in Las Vegas, uses The Beatles as its
musical inspiration. Packing almost 30 songs into a 90-minute show,
“Love” moves firmly into the realm of VH1 and music
videos, but in a good way. The show’s director, Dominic
Champagne, interprets the songs well more often than not, adding
new visuals to the pop anthems everyone already knows. The numbers
range widely in style, mirroring the band’s interest in
experimenting. “Drive My Car” is an upbeat dance number
around an old VW bug that looks like an alternate opening sequence
to an Austin Powers movie, while “Blackbird” features a
comedic doctor trying to teach four birds to fly. All the Cirque
staples are in place, with people bouncing off trampolines,
performing acrobatics and dancing aerial ballets. Perhaps because
the stunts and performances fit safely, if somewhat dully, into
Cirque du Soleil’s stock of party tricks, “Love”
departs from the company’s tradition and emphasizes its
music. When you’re dealing with The Beatles, that’s an
easy decision, but it changes the overall experience of the show
““ walking out of the theater, people are more likely to hum
melodies than debate their favorite stunt. “Love” also
allows The Beatles to sneak from the speakers to the stage. With
fancy lighting design, one segment recreates the band members as
shadows walking across the stage. Four empty tricycles do the same
during “Yesterday.” The empty images conjure the idea
of something missing, clearly the band. If “Love” is an
attempt to make The Beatles seem alive, it fails, but even
considering such an argument is an attempt to dive into a wading
pool. In Las Vegas, invocation does not lead to metaphor, and a
show that implies the band’s presence only wants people to
remember that they like The Beatles, too. The ushers at
“Love” all wear British police costumes and speak in
laughably bad British accents; like everything in Las Vegas, they
cheaply reproduce something else, in this case the hip London of
the 1960s in which The Beatles, not Coldplay, ruled popular
culture. It’s not authentic, but it’s trying hard
enough to convince your imagination to stop minding the gaps.
““ Jake Tracer