Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals

KÀ: The Best Cirque Ever

The highlight of my recent Vegas trip was Cirque du Soleil's spectacular show at the MGM Grand, KÀ. I've seen nearly every show that Cirque has put on, and this is easily the most visually stunning, the most acrobatically impressive, the most exhilarating Cirque show that I've yet experienced. And, yes, I saw O, but frankly I wasn't impressed. I found that the sheer size of the production dwarfed the physical feats on display.

With KÀ, it's not really the size of the show that's remarkable, although it is without question a literally massive undertaking. KÀ is also the most integrated, cohesive, unified of all Cirque's shows. In other words, this is the first Cirque show in which the story actually makes sense.

Granted, it's not the most involved of plots: it basically involves two siblings in an imperial Asian family who become separated and struggle to reunite, finding love and adventure along the way. Yeah, it's not going to win any prizes for complexity or nuance. But the numerous acrobatic performances actually fit into the plot, albeit sometimes in a tangential way. Most Cirque shows have themes and settings, but not so much as plot.

And the set. Oh, my sainted aunt, the set. I'm not one to walk out whistling the scenery but the sheer physical production is simply breathtaking. The theater for KÀ is truly immense, and the set has more hydraulics than Starlight Express, and yet the physical elements don't overshadow the proceedings, but rather enhance them. 

And the acrobatic acts themselves are simply astonishing. A few months back, I was poking around on YouTube, and I found a bunch of clips from KÀ (all of them apparently legal, taken from various online promos and television appearances). Watching these clips really made me want to see the show, and I'm glad that I rearranged my Vegas trip in such a way that I would get to see it. Watching the acts live had me cringing, flinching, clenching, and above all marveling at the imagination involved in dreaming up such acrobatic feats, and the skill involved in executing them.

So, if you're ever in Vegas, put KÀ at the top of your list. Of the six Cirque du Soleil shows currently playing in that city (the others are Mystère, The Beatles: Love, Criss Angel Believe, Zumanity, and O), it is, for my money, the most artistically satisfying.

Love: Cirque du Soleil Meets the Beatles

As I've said recently, whenever I'm in Vegas, I like to take in a Cirque du Soleil show, and this time I was fortunate to see two: The Beatles: Love and KÀ. Look for my review of the latter sometime soon. (In brief: frickin' amazing.)

The Beatles: Love represents the first co-branded Cirque show. (But not the last: cf. Criss Angel Believe.) Previous CdS shows have been all Cirque, all the time. Now they seem to be branching out and riding the marketing coattails of other established brands. I see nothing wrong with that, necessarily, as long as the shows are good.

And Love is good. Very good, in fact. The show embodies an evolutionary impulse on the part of the Cirque creators, an attempt to craft shows with more cohesive narrative structures. (As I'll relate in my review of KÀ, that show reflects the same imperative.) Love is more of a dance show, very loosely telling the tale of The Beatles, with a few acrobatic acts thrown in. Previous Cirque shows have been more act-heavy with dance transitions. Imagine Movin' Out with better songs, more elegant design, and a somewhat less literal narrative, and you essentially have Love.

The Beatles: Love is primarily a stunning visual achievement. The overarching look of the show is simply exquisite, from the diaphanous costumes to the clever animated projections. The physical acts themselves were less impressive than those in your typical Cirque show, but ultimately I didn't mind. There were still a number of acrobatic sequences that brought a very broad, satisfied smile to my face, including a stunning bit with four guys on in-line skates navigating a double half-pipe.

For a while, as I sat watching the show, I felt disappointed that there weren't any performances that made my jaw drop, as happens for me with most Cirque shows. But then I thought, why should the folks at Cirque simply keep trying to make things more impressive, more astonishing, more...American? Because isn't that a lot of what American culture is about? Making things bigger, longer, higher, faster, more elaborate, more expensive, more, more, more. Isn't that what essentially gave us Donald Trump? And isn't that what brought about our current economic mess?

Well, I seem to have strayed from my thesis a bit, but suffice to say, I fully support the apparent effort on the part of Cirque du Soleil to expand beyond the boundaries of their past shows. Especially when it results is something as gorgeous and satisfying as The Beatles: Love.