Mystère, Cirque du Soleil’s first non-traveling, permanent show, opened at Treasure Island on Christmas Day, 1993. For three decades, it has thrived in a city where few things are non-traveling or permanent. It is Cirque’s longest-running production—not just in Las Vegas, but worldwide.

That alone is worthy of recognition, but Mystère’s achievements don’t end at its longevity. Without this trailblazing production, Cirque likely wouldn’t have six shows on the Strip today. Without Mystère’s long tail, it’s likely we wouldn’t have seen such theatrical residency shows as Celine Dion’s A New Day… and Katy Perry’s Play. And without Mystère, we wouldn’t have the best scene in Judd Apatow’s 2007 comedy Knocked Up, in which Seth Rogen’s character flees the show in a psychedelic, mushroom-induced freakout.

To be fair, when it made its debut, Mystère was perceived as just a teeny bit of a freakout. Though Vegas had previously hosted temporary Cirque shows, Mystère was kind of a new thing. This was early 1990s Las Vegas, when the Strip was beginning to shake itself out of a long creative slumber. Back then, the Strip’s marquee acts were largely magicians, showgirl-dominated variety shows and a few aging headliners still hanging on from the Strip’s 1960s heyday. The Montreal, Quebec-based Cirque brought in colorful masked acrobats, jaw-dropping set pieces and a grown man dressed as a baby. The effect that all this wonderful weirdness had on Las Vegas was immediate, electric, and as previously said, lingering.

I was lucky enough to see it happen firsthand.

In early 1994, Mystère performers and crew members began to frequent Café Copioh, the UNLV district coffeehouse where I spent many of my days and nights. Copioh’s baristas played a CD ofMystère’s lovely René Dupéré score several times a day for nearly a year. And one night, I met a crew member who offered to let me watch the show, free of charge, from the lighting booth, which I did in summer 1994.

I can recall only fragments of my first viewing of Mystère. I remember the booming taiko drums that announced the show (and continue to do to this day). I remember cracking up at the comic anarchy of the show’s clowns, Bébé François and Benny Le Grand. And I remember tearing up during the bungee act, while the show’s band played Dupéré’s “Kunya Sobé.” I strongly remember that feeling, because I still get it. More than any other show, Mystère makes me want to run away and join the circus.

RJ Owens, one of the inheritors of the Bébé François role—originally played by the late Francois Dupuis—told me in a conversation last year that Mystère, like all the large-scale Cirque shows that followed, is meant to overwhelm.

“One thing that (original director) Franco Dragone was passionate about was filling the entire space with activity. So, even though there’s a centralized act going on, somewhere there will be ancillary things that are happening that if by chance your eye wanders, you’re going to catch them and go, ‘Oh, look at that,’” he said. “I call it ‘search recidivism’, because Cirque shows have a unique ability to keep audiences coming back. Every time you come to Mystère, you will see something different; the show will be the same, but you’ll have different seats, might have had a little more wine with dinner, might be at 9:30 as opposed to the 7 o’clock show. … If you’re fortunate enough to see everything, it’s eye candy. Cinematic eye candy.”

He added that my weepy first-timer experience isn’t uncommon. He recalled an encounter he had while working on another Cirque show, Saltimbanco.

“I walked out 20 minutes after the show was over, makeup’s off, and I’m in my street clothes. The crew was getting set up for the next day and there was a couple sitting 300 feet from the stage, nobody sitting around them, and they were just holding each other and sobbing,” he said. “I asked them, ‘Are you okay?’ And they said, ‘Couldn’t be better. This was beautiful. It was so beautiful. But we just don’t want to ever leave it. We want to sit here and take it all in.’ That’s when I realized what I was doing on stage was far, far more than doing a musical, far more than doing a comedy or play. And it’s the same with Mystère.”

LIVING MYSTèRE

Multiplying one sobbing couple by two shows a night, five nights a week for 30 years, it’s reasonable to assume that a very large number of people are reluctant to leave Mystère after its final bows. Using that logic, it’s not all that surprising to learn that several members of the cast and crew never did leave Mystère behind, and likely never will.

Magalie Drolet, an acrobat who performs bungee, Chinese poles, stiltwalking and other roles in Mystère, joined the show in June 1993. She was 20 years old at the time.

“I didn’t speak English at all, so for me, it was a big thing,” she says.

She has performed consistently over three decades of shows. Her role has grown a bit—she’s now acting as the artist coach for the bungee act, teaching newbies the ropes. (One of her recent students would make their show debut the day after our interview, she notes proudly.)

Despite her administrative position, Drolet doesn’t take any of Mystère sitting down. She shows up to the theater a good two hours early on show nights—“so I have plenty of time to warm up, because as you get older, you need a bit more time for that”—and then figures out where she needs to be.

“Depending on what the show needs, I’ll do an opening Spermato [a big-bellied comic character] or opening drums. Then Chinese poles, followed by bungee. Then I do another Spermato cue, and I do stilts at the end of the show.

“I still love what I do,” she says. “People are like, ‘I can’t believe you’re still there after all this time.’ And I say, ‘Well, when you love what you do, it’s hard to think of what else you want to do.’ It’s just unfortunate that we really rely on our body to do this kind of job because, honestly, I would do that for the rest of my life. You know? And I will until my body doesn’t want to anymore, but my head wants to do this. My heart wants to do this.”

Sean Jensen, Mystère’s head of lighting, special effects and projection, has also been with the show since the beginning. He came on board as a follow spot operator, having previously worked at the Golden Nugget, working on shows by the likes of Don Rickles and Tony Orlando.

And like Drolet, he, too, is a Mystère lifer.

“I was 23 years old when I came to Mystère,” he says, measuring the intervening years by milestones: “I got married. I had kids. I’ve seen my kids get married; I have grandkids now.”

Jensen’s department is one of several that currently benefits from Cirque’s continuing belief in Mystère. During a backstage tour for the Weekly’s writers and editors, our guide noted that Cirque president Daniel Lamarre had recently taken in a Mystère performance, sitting in the regular seats like a paying customer; afterwards, he suggested that the show could be louder, and approved a complete replacement of Mystère’s audio back end. (It’s a testament to how well they did that when we sat down to watch the show, a scant few minutes after the tour concluded, I didn’t think about the audio mix at all; I just lost myself in it, once again.)

Now, Jensen says, they’re modernizing the show’s lighting. Another milestone: He’s actively ripping out the equipment he helped to install 30 years ago.

“Every single light nowadays is a computer. We had 1980s technology; now we’re putting in 2023 technology,” he ways. “When we’re dark, I rip a section of the system apart, we put new stuff in and then I stay all night and program it to make it look like it did before. We’ve probably already replaced, I don’t know, 450 lights.

“The challenge is mixing LED technology and old tungsten light bulbs,” he adds. “We’re kind of in the middle [of the project], so you saw some of that stuff that’s been integrated. And since you didn’t say it looks different, that’s a good sign, because that’s my job … The vibrancy of the colors, and the capabilities of the new technology, is just going to enhance the beauty of the show even more.”

We have some time to appreciate Mystère’s renewed look and feel. Shortly after the show returned from the pandemic shutdown in 2021—the first of Cirque’s Vegas shows to reboot—Treasure Island immediately granted Mystère a 10-year contract extension. When it runs out, Mystère will be close to its 40th year. It’s not unreasonable to expect that, when that time comes, Sean Jensen and Magalie Drolet will still be in the house.

“I’ve seen a lot of coming and going, especially in the recent years. Before, people would stick around for years and years,” Drolet says. “But still, every time somebody new comes in, they’re welcomed with open arms. Everybody’s very nice to each other and respectful of each other and loving to each other. And now I’m on the older side, so I see them all as my kids [laughs]. I’m like, ‘Come here; I’ll help you zip,’ and ‘If you need help with anything, ask me.’ You just want to be there.”

“Why in the world would I ever leave? They’ll have to pull me out kicking and screaming,” Jensen says, laughing. “Youngsters come in, join the show and say, ‘Man, I saw this show when I was five, and I always wanted to be in it.’”

LOVING MYSTèRE

I realize I haven’t said much about the show itself. The thing is, if you haven’t seen Mystère, I don’t want to spoil it for you, though admittedly, Mystère may be spoiler-proof: I’ve seen the show multiple times over the years, and even as recently as a couple of weeks ago, it still surprised me in places.Like Owens said, even a slight change of perspective can make all the difference. “Search recidivism” is real.

In that spirit, I’m going to push you gently towards Mystère. If you’ve seen it before, go back. If you haven’t seen it yet, go and appreciate an enduring piece of art—a show that created its own lane in Las Vegas, and continues to lead it 30 years on.

“Mystère really touches all the bases,” Jensen says. “They just did everything right … they really made something that Vegas hadn’t seen before, something very unique, very magical, mysterious and kind of bizarre. It hits so many emotions.”

“I think Mystère is more of a human show, in the sense that it’s about what we as humans can do physically, acrobatically, while some of other the shows are a lot more technology,” Drolet says. “I feel like we still have a bit of that feeling like [Cirque’s] tent shows, where the audience is close to the stage and we have a connection with them. We can have eye contact with the audience. We can touch them emotionally. And, acrobatically, they just love it.”

Click HERE to subscribe for free to the Weekly Fix, the digital edition of Las Vegas Weekly! Stay up to date with the latest on Las Vegas concerts, shows, restaurants, bars and more, sent directly to your inbox!