Many people come to Las Vegas in hopes of seeing the kind of Vegas show that no longer exists. They hope to see variety, with singers, dancers, acrobats, magicians and comedians practically stumbling over each other in an eager rush to entertain. They hope to see outrageous spectacle—the kind of thing they can’t see anywhere else, even on TV or in movies. They hope to see ornate and—why not?—skimpy costuming. And they want it suffused with the production show campiness that made “Vegas” into an adjective. In essence, they want what they imagine a Vegas Strip show to be.
Several Strip production shows come close to checking all these boxes, but few come closer than Awakening, playing Fridays through Tuesdays at Wynn. This $120 million-dollar show draws on nearly every landmark era of Vegas entertainment—the sheer spectacle of Cirque du Soleil, the Disneylike immersion of the Forum Shops at Caesars, the costuming and glitz of Lido de Paris and Jubilee, the myth-building and illusions of Siegfried & Roy and David Copperfield, and even the heavy EDM beats and radiant stagecraft of Electric Daisy Carnival.
What comes out on the other side of this collision of influences is … well, Awakening. The show is proudly and even defiantly its own thing. It’s the story of IO, an incorruptible young protagonist with a head of flaming red hair that makes her easy to spot even when there’s a lot going on. She undergoes a quest to reconcile the forces of light and darkness, which she does by seizing necessary totems from various elemental spirits; the story is at once simple and a little difficult to follow. (A narration by Sir Anthony Hopkins, spoken directly into our ears via speakers built into the seats, helps to keep us on track.)
The important thing is that the quest leads her, and us, into one breathtaking scene after the next. We visit an undersea world, populated by giant jellyfish and a stunning whale puppet created by The Lion King’s Michael Curry, a co-producer of the show with Baz Halpin (producer of Taylor Swift’s Reputation tour) and legendary Vegas producer Bernie Yuman. Later, IO gets lost in a dark, foreboding wood that acts as a showcase for Awakening’s dancers and acrobats.
The cast is huge, with 60 performers darting in and out of the action. The score, by film composer Brian Tyler, often grooves harder than you’d expect from a Vegas show. And through it all, the show’s endlessly versatile glass-topped, 60-foot circular stage becomes whatever the show needs it to be, from a kinetic dancefloor to the roof of a fluffy cloud, through a complex system of LED screens and hydraulic lifts.
Curiously, this version of Awakening is actually a reawakening; earlier this year the show closed for changes and adjsutments, reopening at the height of summer. Whatever it is they did to the show, they made something you can bring nearly any visitor to see—the club kid, the Cirque stan, the old-timer who saw Siegfried & Roy at the Frontier—and give them almost exactly what they want. Awakening is mythological Vegas making a wish, and real-life Vegas fulfilling it with big, confident style.
AWAKENING Friday-Tuesday, times vary, $99+. Wynn, awakening.com.
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