http://www.hollywoodtoday.net/?p=11434
I'm With Ringo: A Baby Boomer goes to review a show on the Vegas trip
and realizes how important the Beatles music has been in his life.
By Alex Ben Block
November 3rd, 2009
My love affair with the Beatles music began in the Sixties and is
still going strong. Their songs have turned out to be oracles of a
new age in which music was all that mattered. When the British
invasion hit America in the early 1960s I immediately surrendered.
They have been a key part of the soundtrack of my life ever since.
The Fab Four got me again last Friday night when I was blown away by
the Cirque du Soleil's multimedia stage and musical extravaganza
"Love" at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. They have taken the Beatles
music and matched it to the zany, creative genius of Cirque du Soleil
(French for "Circus of the Sun)." The result is a delight of
bouncing, flying madness set to the soundtrack of the legendary
British band, creating near sensory overload and a unique form of
entertainment.
Today in the U.S. Asia, Europe and the Middle East, Cirque offers a
multi-media experience that crosses theater and a circus with the
pacing of a shoot em up western, as might be conceived by the Marx
brothers on steroids. The environment is replete with huge video
screens exploding with stunning images in perfect sync with the flow
of history, life, acrobats, jugglers, stilt walkers, dancers,
magicians, bizarre iconic images, all flashing, dashing and spinning
history as seen through Alice's looking glass. The five dozen
performers deliver their magic and disappear leaving the viewer
almost breathless.
It's a kind of Beatles opera, crossed with the circus, Olympic
gymnastics, side show freaks, beautiful women, children, repurposed
VW bugs, trampoline performers, roller skate hot shots and costumed
characters to create an interactive pop art happening right in front
of your eyes. The audience around me in the multi deck theater at the
Mirage was as caught up in Beatlemania as I was, especially when a
massive white silk sheet, the kind used for parachutes, was draped in
flowing white yards of material over our heads making us part of the
show for those few moments.
Most dazzling to me was the kamikaze team of roller skaters in furry
white boots and helmets flying onto and over graded barriers, hurling
through the air, doing impossible gravity defying loops, often inches
from one another, with amazing precision delivered at breakneck
speed, all without a net and usually accompanied by performers with a
smile. This was clearly dangerous stuff but they all looked like they
had just arrived at the best party ever. Maybe it was for them. A
producer wrote in a show diary that the performers loved being part
of the shows (there are half a dozen touring companies, as well as
shows in fixed locations on almost every continent with a sizable city).
For "Love," the frantic narrative the experience is enriched because
the music is from the original soundtrack of The Beatles as recorded
in the 1960s at their Abbey Road studio in the U.K. under the
guidance of master producer George Martin. A cast of 60 international
artists performs in a specially designed auditorium with panoramic
sound and hi tech video visuals on massive screens that surround the
upper reaches of the arena.
Above it all floating on the giant screens were the images of the Fab
Four, the lads from Liverpool, together and separately. They were
interspliced with offbeat, inventive, whimsical, amusing, cheeky gags
and imagery as the high speed circus rolled along, things and people
dropping from above and rising from below. One memorable bit involved
building a whole town square out of bricks and then demolishing it in
a representation of the World War II bombing of England, before
sweeping it below stage into a literal dustbin of history, all in a
mad scramble paced like the Marx Brothers in "Duck Soup." A dreamlike
sequence to "Yesterday" is soon followed by blowing bubbles to
"Strawberry Fields Forever" as lights blinked all around the room
like a million stars on an incredibly clear night in the desert and
the war faded and post-war prosperity brought a new economic boom.
The Beatles story is well known but I had to do a little research to
find out how "Love" came about and how it was viewed by the surviving
Beatles, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, as well as the families of
martyred John Lennon and the late, great thinking man's Beatle George
Harrison, musician and extraordinary businessman in his day.
It was Harrison, before his death, who became friends with Cirque
founder Guy Laliberté, which led to the creations of this particular
show. Laliberté is a French Canadian business man and legendary poker
player (already my kind of guy), who owns 95 percent of Cirque du
Soleil. He was a high school dropout from a middle class family in
Quebec City (his father worked at Alcoa) who became a street musician
and performer. He tried a straight job at a hydroelectric power plant
but when he was laid off due to a labor action, Laliberté joined a
group of people who liked to walk on stilts, led by Gilles Ste-Croix,
and was tutored by a group of fire-eaters. In 1982, Guy and Gilles
partnered to organize a summer fair with businessman Daniel Gauthier
called "La Fête Foraine." It produced a show that toured Canada that summer.
Ste-Croix was famous for walking 56 miles across Quebec on stilts as
a publicity stunt. It paid off when the government of Quebec gave
Laliberté $1.5 million to put on Quebec's 450th anniversary
celebration of French explorer Jacques Cartier. He used that to
organize the company that today mounts Cirque du Sol production all
over the world. In the beginning there was "Le Grand Tour due Cirque
du Soleil," which won raves and attracted an enthusiastic audience,
and gave them their name.
They played across Canada from 1983 on but never south of the border.
Then in 1987, Laliberté rolled the dice on everything he had made
until that point to put on his first U.S. show at the Los Angeles
Arts Festival. The legend is that if the show hadn't been successful,
he didn't have money to get the troupe home to Quebec. Instead it was
the first of a series of stunning productions that earned critical
acclaim and sold out specially constructed arenas all over the world.
The story is told that after the triumph in Los Angeles, Laliberté
and Gauthier met with executives of Columbia Pictures who had
requested a meeting to discuss a Cirque du Soleil movie. The French
Canadians sniffed a rat when the contract not only licensed a movie
but essentially transferred ownership of the entire operation to
Columbia. They walked away and have remained private ever since.
Laliberté has made a fortune and used much of it to pursue his
version of philanthropy. Most famously he pledged $100 million over
25 years to the One Drop Foundation which he created to fight
poverty. Its mission is to give everyone access water. The foundation
advertises that it finances projects in the third world to improve
sources of water, teach food security and promote greater equality
between men and women. He has a program for street kids, and uses One
Drop to promote folk arts, popular theater, music dance and visual arts.
In Las Vegas, there are currently more than half a dozen Cirque shows
at the Luxor, the new City Center, MGM Grand, Treasure Island, and
the much talked about O at the Bellagio. I went to see Love at the
Mirage, however, because it had the other magical ingredient, the
Liverpool sound, which has provided the soundtrack for much of my
life. Now I watched, listened and sensed the music as it drove the
audio and visual smorgasbord of the Cirque in its full tilt boogey mode.
I wondered if the remaining Beatles liked the show. What I discovered
was that I was with Ringo. He had seen Love on opening night and said
what I wanted to say: "I loved the show and I loved the music! I
think the show is really exciting. I thought the effects, the people
doing their stuff, the projections were great, too much, really! I
thought it was very emotional; who knew a few years ago when The
Beatles were just chatting to each other making those records that we
could put it to such great use. And it was emotional because two of
us aren't there. Overall, it's a festival of love. Peace and love."
Ringo had attended the premiere with Sir Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono and
Olivia Harrison, among others, and all praised the production and the
way it brought the music and the band back to life for a night.
As an aging baby boomer, it evoked a host of memories that made me
realize the Beatles had always been there for me. When they were
fresh and young, I was discovering rock and roll. When they became
part of the 60s youth revolution, I was coming of age. When they went
to India and began to meditate seeking spiritual answers, I began my
search as well. When they protested war and famine and inequality,
those were my values as well. And when they broke up and grew up and
found their own place, each going in a different direction, so did I.
When John Lennon, who loved peace, was murdered, I was among the
multitude that mourned and sadly sang the refrain, "Give peace a chance…"
Now the Cirque has given the Beatles legacy a new vibrancy and made
it fun and enticing to a new generation, while also serving up
delicious memories for those of us who grew up with John, Paul,
George and Ringo.
The show ends with a full blown parade built around Sgt. Pepper and
his lonely hearts band, singing that it is time to say goodbye. As
the Beatles marched off into history, the music stayed inside of me,
and the memory of this show was more than just good live theater, it
was the heritage of my generation revived and reborn.
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