It’s easy to be edgy when you’re new to the scene, but not so much when you’re a seasoned veteran. Cirque du Soleil, born on the streets of the tiny Canadian town of Baie-Saint-Paul and introduced to Vegas in a tent at the Mirage 23 years ago, understands this reality all too well.
Consider the company’s sexy adult production Zumanity, relaunched to splashy fanfare at New York-New York in February. In its original form, Zumanity was deemed a radical production. The show was such a jarring shift in Cirque’s family-friendly tenor that in the production’s first few months, scores of ticketholders walked out too offended to finish the night.
By means of comparison, Absinthe cast members chuckle at the more than 220 audience members who have strode out of its tented venue over the show’s four-year run at Caesars Palace. But in its infancy back in 2003, Zumanity was blowing away those numbers. The show was chasing away at least 100 ticketholders per performance, because the adult content was so unexpectedly offensive.
In the time since, however, that particular show and even Cirque in general had lost its mojo (to use a phrase that itself has lost its mojo). A dozen years after launching, Zumanity was no longer the show to see if you wanted the edgiest experience on the Strip. Absinthe has become the leader in a cluster of shows seeking to strip Cirque of its leadership role among productions with adult themes and humor. Others, like Zombie Burlesque at the Miracle Mile Shops’ V Theater, have since followed by generating terrific word of mouth around town and robust ticket sales.
In the face of this Strip-wide challenge to its artistic superiority, what was Cirque to do?
“When you are a leader in a category of show, in order to remain edgier than the competition, you have to refresh,” Cirque du Soleil President Daniel Lamarre said just before the One Night for One Drop charity show March 20 at the Mirage. “We are getting back to where the show is more modern, and becoming more and more the talk of the town, which was the way we were when we started.”
Lamarre said that for the past few years there has been a concerted effort by competing productions to target Zumanity artistically while cutting into its audience. “That’s totally accurate,” he responded. “I look around the Strip at other shows and I understand this. We know in our shows that if we bring a new twist or new acts, it will be a great way for those shows to maintain their leadership positions in each category.” As always, Cirque also competes with itself. Since Zumanity opened, the company has launched a half-dozen shows (one of which, Viva Elvis, opened and closed at Aria).
The changes to Zumanity have been a tighter presentation throughout and updated choreography from Yanis Marshall, who has redesigned several familiar numbers. One of the more dazzling examples is the red-mohawked aerialist Brandon Pereyda soaring over the crowd in a harness made of chains, backed by a live cellist and vocalist. The show still features what is the only extended kiss involving gay male characters of any major Strip production—this after an impassioned cage fight in which the combatants wear red pumps with six-inch-high heels. The show’s comedy remains both biting and campy, with host Edie (as portrayed by the swift-witted Christopher Kenney) toggling the hosting duties with the hormonally charged Shannan Calcutt and Nicky Dewhurst. The show still climaxes with an orgy on its circular stage, involving a few hand-picked audience members.
What Cirque delivers, always, is the grandeur of its staging. The theater in the round at New York-New York has 1,250 seats, more than double the capacity of the Spiegeltent at Caesars. Cirque does nothing on a diminished scale these days, and moving 138,000 tickets a week to its eight Strip shows is always a challenge.
“Our priority is to bring this refreshing to the public, through marketing, because we are so excited about what we have done,” Lamarre said. “We have already seen a pickup in sales for Zumanity.”
Cirque will next focus on Love, its artistic and business partnership with The Beatles. That show will celebrate its 10th anniversary in June 2016, and movement is already afoot to refresh that show visually and (especially) musically. When producer Giles Martin, son of legendary Beatles producer George Martin, was in Las Vegas last fall, he marveled at the technological wizardry Cirque had lavished upon Michael Jackson One at Mandalay Bay. Clearly, Love, too, is already ripe for an upgrade by Cirque’s lofty standards.
“We already have a good idea about what we want to do, and we have been working with Giles and Dominic Champagne, the director who has been in on the show since the beginning,” Lamarre said. “We’ve met with the people from MGM [Resorts], and we are all in line with what we should be doing with the show.”
When asked when that timeline for a revamp of Love is to begin, Lamarre laughed and said, “It started yesterday.” Of course. That is always Day One on the timeless calendar of Cirque du Soleil.
