September 2006 Archives

Maureen Stapleton, who always could be believed when she said something, was true to her word.

After attending the memorial for Colleen Dewhurst in 1991, "Mo," as she was affectionately called by her friends, was heard to say, "I'm not coming to one of these things ever - except my own!" *

Yesterday, Ms. Stapleton, who died March 13 at age 80 of pulmonary disease [she was an inveterate smoker and drinker], was there at the Circle in the Square memorial tribute by family and peers to her legendary self and Tony and Drama Desk-winning stage and Oscar-winning screen career.

She was bigger than life in a video scrapbook of photos tracing her life from childhood in Upstate New York through numerous triumphs; and she was also heard singing.

Ms. Stapleton, who made her Broadway debut in 1946 in The Playboy of the Western World and went on to win Tony Awards for her performances in The Rose Tattoo and The Gingerbread Lady, came alive in clips from film and TV roles and the vivid recollections of stars that worked with her.

In addition to her Tonys, Ms. Stapleton won an Oscar as best supporting actress for her work in the film Reds. Other starring roles included Orpheus Descending, The Glass Menagerie, Plaza Suite and The Little Foxes. Her film work included Queen of the Stardust Ballroom and Cocoon. She guest-starred during the Golden Age of 50s live TV dramas in, among many others, All the King's Men on the Kraft Television Theatre, For Whom the Bell Tolls on Playhouse 90 and on Studio One.

Among those present were Ms. Stapleton's son Danny Allentuck and daughter Katharine from her first marriage and the actress' brother Jack.

Recalling Ms. Stapleton's legendary phobias, such as fear of flying and elevators, were Allentuck and Broadway and Emmy-winning TV veteran Doris Roberts and Tony and Drama Desk winner Elizabeth Wilson**, who co-starred with Ms. Stapleton in 1972's short-lived The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild; former co-star, DD winner and Tony nominee Bob Balaban; DD, Oscar and Emmy-winning actress and director Lee Grant, featured with Ms. Stapleton and a huge cast in 1949's Detective Story; Tony winner George Grizzard, who appeared with Ms. Stapleton twice [1965 and 1972]; and long-time friend, Tony and DD winner Frances Sternhagen.

Tony nominee Anne Jackson and multiple award-winner Eli Wallach also paid tribute. The Wallachs, a stand-up comedy team if ever there was one, can always be depended upon to be entertaining, and yesterday was no exception.

Mr. Wallach not only co-starred with Ms. Stapleton three times, including Tennessee Williams' acclaimed 1951 The Rose Tattoo, for which they won Tony Awards - in the Featured category!, but also was a life-long offstage friend.

Ms. Jackson described Ms. Stapleton as "a cross between a saint and the devil" and called her "a work of art who acted from the gut. "She is not gone," said Ms. Jackson. "She never will be. Maureen left a legacy."

Ms. Roberts read a remembrance from Tony-winning director Milton Katselas, who directed Ms. Stapleton and Harry Guardino in a short-lived 1966 Rose Tattoo revival [that featured a young Christopher Walken and Maria Tucci, who was Tony-nominated].

"Mo'''s reviews were not spectacular. In her brutally honest autobiography, A Hell of a Life [1995, with Jane Scovell], she comments that just as the curtain was about to go up the next night, one of the snippy sisters playing "child" asked if she'd read the reviews. She whispered no, and the girl told her "They said you were too old and too fat." Then the curtain went up. Do you wonder what happened to that kid when the curtain came down?

It will come as no surprise that Ms. Stapleton was every bit as pugnacious in life as she was onstage. Several spoke on how she hated injustices, and did what she could to rectify them. Ms. Grant spoke of Ms. Stapleton and Kim Stanley risking their careers by signing petitions supporting her when she was blacklisted.

Balaban spoke of how Ms. Stapleton nourished and watched over him when he was a struggling actor in 1968 making his Broadway debut in Plaza Suite; and the four a.m. call he received when she found out he wasn't so poor. "Why didn't you tell me you came from money?" she barked. His family owned theatres in Chicago and an uncle was head of Paramount.

Then there was the time "Mo" steeled herself for the ride up in the elevator at Balaban's building for a party...and how the elevator got stuck and Ms. Stapleton had to be hoisted up through the car's ceiling and stand on top until firemen came to the rescue. When she finally entered the apartment, she patted him on the face and said, "Next time, get something on the second floor."

Barbara Cook sang via recording ["There Was You" from The Fantasticks], later appearing live doing a moving rendition of Amanda McBroom's ballad "Ship in A Bottle." When the applause faded, Cook said, "That's the kind of song Mo would hate!" She segued into one that Ms. Stapleton loved, "Hard-hearted Hanna."

Recalling the only time Ms. Stapleton heard her in a club, she said. "I'd done some pop songs. Afterward, Maureen said, ëI'm not going to tell you you're good. You know you're good, but I don't want to hear all that s#^t!'"

She brought the house down again remembering some prim and proper ladies who lunch, decked out in finery including white gloves and pearl necklaces, who were admiring a huge framed painting that ran along a hotel corridor. "They were wondering what artist had done it and what it was supposed to be, when Maureen blurted, ëI'll tell you what it is. It's thirty-five feet of s#^!'"

Among notables in the audience were Alec Baldwin, Doris Belack [wife of producer/director/playwright Philip Rose], veteran music director and arranger Abba Bogin, Tony winner Zoe Caldwell, DD winner Joan Copeland, Marge Champion, Harvey Evans, Carol Kane [currently starring in Wicked], film producer Rick McKay [Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There], two-time Oscar nominee Sylvia Miles; Tony-nominee Rosemary Murphy, famed New Yorker columnist Lillian Ross, Tony and DD winner Marian Seldes, Tony-nominee and DD winner Lois Smith, Tony nominee and DD Lifetime Achievement Award honoree Helen Stenborg [widow of Bernard Hughes], Betsy von Furstenberg [who co-starred with Ms. Stapleton in The Gingerbread Lady] and Tony nominee Walter Willison, who made his Broadway debut opposite Ms. Stapleton in 1970's short-lived Norman, Is That You? [which, if IBDB.com's records are correct, she played for two weeks while she was still in Plaza Suite].

There were other recollections of their friend "Mo" sent from such friends as Kaye Ballard, Diane Keaton, Tony winner Patricia Neal, Woody Allen and multiple Tony-winners Julie Harris, Ms. Caldwell and Mike Nichols.

Ballard, whose almost tell-all autobiography How I Lost 10 Pounds in 53 Years is just out in a new edition [Backstage Books], wrote of Ms. Stapleton and Ethel Merman visiting after a preview of Molly [1973], based on the character created on radio and TV by Gertrude Berg.

It was Ballard's first time with billing above the title. "I was a bit nervous," she said. "Neither were known for pulling any punches. When they entered, Ethel shouted, ëBallard! Where the hell's the john?' and Maureen said, very calmly, in a voice only heard in a baseball park, ëGet the f#^k out of this!'" The show closed two days shy of a month.

In a 1981 letter, Lillian Hellman congratulated Ms. Stapleton on Hudson Valley Community College in her hometown of Troy naming their theatre in her honor. Then Ms. Hellman proposed that "Alongside the theatre...[that] will prove you are a better actress than Eleanor Duse, who was to my mind a very bad one, there be another place of worship set up as a tributeÖa small Champagne parlor."

In Ms. Stapleton's last Broadway appearance, as Birdie in the 1981 revival of The Little Foxes, all the attention was on Elizabeth Taylor as Regina Giddens. Though Taylor acquitted herself quite well, the play belonged to Ms. Stapleton. Her performance was wondrously poignant and heart wrenching. It netted her a Tony nomination.

Maureen Stapleton, winner of an Oscar, Tonys, Drama Desk, Grammy and an Emmy and a 1981 inductee into the Theatre Hall of Fame, made up her mind to be an actress at age eight. In her late teens, she was determined to escape her Troy roots for acting.

"The first time I informed my mother that I was going to be an actress," Ms. Stapleton wrote in her autobiography, "she said 'Okay, okay, be an actress.' She didn't get that I wasn't asking her permission, I was telling her what I was going to do. It was a declaration of independence."

Ms. Stapleton stated that no one encouraged her. "My ambition came from left field. There were no actors or performers in the family, no tradition of the theater, nothing to follow, just something to go after. No one had said, 'Yes, you've got it, baby, go after it.' I made up my mind all on my own."

She stated that she never wanted to do anything else. "I'm not sure there's anything else I could have done. I don't feel I had a choice. For a fat, struggling kid like me, the only way out was to be someone else."

For those who experienced Ms. Stapleton's memorable stage and screen performances, it's not such a surprise that the shy loneliness and poignancy she brought to her roles was rooted in the intense emotion of her childhood, especially her view of men based on her strict Irish Catholic upbringing and non-relationship with her alcoholic father.

"Mo" was awestruck with the Hollywood legends of her childhood movie-going--not to mention actors Barton MacLane and Joel McCrea. She was addicted to the fan magazines of that period.

Onstage and onscreen, Ms. Stapleton was always a masterful craftsperson, superb in what she did and how she seem to make it look so easy. In her personal life, as well-documented by her son and others at the memorial, she was a mess of phobias and paranoia, and a mass of contradictions.

In her autobiography, Ms. Stapleton's remembrance of Colleen Dewhurst is eloquent, funny and sad - a celebration of "a unique, warm, giving, and sloppy as hell human being and actress who allowed herself to die before her time." She reminisced about the loss of so many good and valued friends.

In those pages, between tales of her legendary neuroses and wonderful remembrances of a Who's Who of Theater, there're anecdotes about her relationship with Bud Brando [Marlon to the rest of us], George Abbott [with whom she had an intense affair and almost married], Tennessee Williams, Noel Coward, Sidney Lumet, Gary Cooper, Marilyn Monroe, Hellman, Montgomery Clift, the Jacksons, Taylor, Allen and "Sir Lord God," her fond name for Laurence Olivier.

Ms. Stapleton in a most direct and down to earth manner also imparted valuable information to the working actor and beginner and gives great insights into acting. Though she frequently made light of what is required of an actor ["Acting? I do a job. I get paid. I go home"], she devoted hours to her characterizations, no doubt a trait she inherited from her years at the Actors Studio.

Some of her comments: "I've been asked so damn many times about acting and how you do it and all that crap. I'm still at a loss as to how to describe it. Listen, acting is acting. Your task is to keep the audience awake and interested, and make no mistake, keeping them awake is numero uno. You get your skills going, the technical stuff like movement and voice projection - although with all the goddamn miking going on today, who the hell needs to project? - and after that, you have to center your energies."

The part of acting Ms. Stapleton loved most was the challenge and opportunity to leave reality behind and become someone completely different. "But," she wrote, "difficulties do arise. Acting can be all-consuming, but you can't allow yourself to be consumed. You shouldn't continue acting when the curtain comes down. Sounds easy, but it's hard to extricate yourself from inside that person after being in character for an evening.

"As I grew older and more experienced," she continued, "I tried to close the door a bit tighter and not drag my impersonation into my real life. Coming back to reality is tough, though, and when you're in a long-running play, it becomes even tougher."

Keeping fresh was another important task, which she noted wasn't so easy. "You have to, though, because each night is a different audience and you owe them your best. You can't just let down one night and say, 'Gee, too bad you guys didn't catch me yesterday.' You have to be in peak condition. You've got to get lots of sleep and you've got to keep the level of your performance up."

"Your aim," she went on, "is to be the character. You can't be outside yourself and looking in. You plunge in. Your full concentration is on the problems of whomever you're pretending to be. And you have to pretend anew at each performance."

The key word for Ms. Stapleton was "pretend." She revealed that she was never a big fan of reality. "Give me magic any day. Magic is what you get in acting. I love the pretense."

When Ms. Stapleton came to New York to study acting, she reported, "No one saw a Sarah Bernhardt aching to break out."

She made her debut in 1935 in a school production as a gypsy. That was "probably the last time I portrayed anyone under fifty. I was cast as an older woman. I was heavy, and 'heavy' translates 'old' on the stage whether you're twelve or twenty. So I played old dames - mothers, grandmothers, maiden aunts, stuff like that."

At the memorial, Grizzard who played Tom Wingfield in the 1965 revival of The Glass Menagerie, noted Ms. Stapleton played his mother, Amanda, "which made her three years old when I was born." He was born in 1928; she in 1925."

No one, she advised, should go into acting to make money. "But," she countered, "you have to survive, and good hard cash makes it possible to survive in style. The more money I have, the finer artist I feel I am. While I think I was an okay actress, it's too damn bad I never got really rich."

Acting, noted Miss Stapleton, is "a mixed bag of pleasure and pain. If you had a brain in your head, you'd never chose to do it, but wanting to act isn't a question of intelligence. It's answering a need. I answered the call and it's too damn late to hang up. Acting is my job, my work, and the one area of my life in which I'm totally secure."

However, she pointed out that acting is not like other professions. "If you're a great plumber, doctor or seamstress, whatever the hell, people will beat a path to your door. You can be a great actor and the best you can hope for is to get a job for a while. Your own 'worth' doesn't necessarily come into the picture."

She added that no matter what job you have, you've got to accept the fact that you're going to be spending most of your life out of work. "If this crap weren't discouraging enough," she stated, "you have to sell yourself, too, over and over."

When you are working, she advised, "You have to be totally focused when you're on stage. There have been times when my concentration was challenged. Loud noises kill me, and yet I'm not especially thrown by the sounds of an audience like coughing, sneezing or talking."

Do you wonder what type of response audience members would get from "Mo" if their cell phones had gone off during one of her performances. Thankfully, we'll never know.

Ms. Stapleton did find applause satisfying "but whenever I start to get carried away, I remember Adlai Stevenson's reply when, while running for President, he was asked ëWhat's it like to hear all that applause? What's it like to know that people love you that much?' He answered, ëIt's fine if you don't inhale.'"

She found no shortage of good actors, "but what there isn't as much of is the kind of integrity and kindness personified by people like Katharine Cornell and [director] Guthrie McClintic. I learned theatrical behavior from them. Marlon Brando was a member of the Cornell troupe, and she may have been the one person in the theater he really respected. Probably because she may have been the only woman he'd ever met who didn't try to get in his pants."

It has often been written that Ms. Stapleton was best playing vulnerable heroines, but some of her best performances are playing pugnacious, profane women.

One reminisce that wasn't brought up yesterday was Ms. Stapleton's reply to a reporter when he asked, "How does it feel to be recognized as one of the greatest actresses in the world?" She replied, "Not nearly as exciting as it would be if I were acknowledged as one of the greatest lays in the world."

Ms. Stapleton's often-uttered goodbyes ended with her saying, "Did I forget to tell you that I love you?" No, you didn't, "Mo." And the feeling is mutual.

* At the memorial for Ms. Dewhurst, "Mo" recalled the Tony Awards when she and Ms. Dewhurst were nominated ["Mo" for Plaza Suite; Ms. Dewhurst for More Stately Mansions]. Declared "Mo": "And we both lost," pointing to Zoe Caldwell, "to that Australian c#^t." You could hear a pin drop as eyebrows were raised. When Ms. Caldwell practically hit the floor laughing, there was some nervous laughter from the audience. Many felt it was an occasion where "Mo" crossed the line. In the next day's New York Times, a critic agreed. Ms. Stapleton was criticized for being "inappropriate" and she swore she'd never attend another memorial except her own.

** Ms. Wilson was also Ms. Stapleton's understudy in Plaza Suite.

For extensive stage and screen credits of Maureen Stapleton, visit: IBDb.com - Internet Broadway Database; and IMDb.com - Internet Movie Database.

[I had the pleasure of knowing Ms. Stapleton during my tenure with MCA/ Universal Pictures and promoting her performance in 1970's Airport, for which she received an Oscar nomination for her poignant portrayal of long suffering wife Inez Guerrero (opposite Van Heflin). When she came to the New York premiere at the Cinerama, once the Strand and even later the Warner, she bounced in as the lights were about to go down and was being ushered to her seat.

"No, I want to sit in the balcony so I can smoke!" she said. When told there was no balcony, she replied, "Yes, there is. I've sat up there!"

"But," she was informed, "now it's a multiplex." "A what?" she asked in wonderment. I explained the balcony was now a separate theatre. As we started to her seat, she blurted, "Honey, get me a drink!" and I asked if she wanted a large or small Coca-Cola. "I want more than a Coca-Cola!" But all she got was a Coke.

Afterward, as I met up with her and she received acclades from media, industry execs and Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin, she couldn't understand what all the "fuss" was about.

That led to a discussion at a later luncheon. Ms. Stapleton said onstage, "you get instant audience reaction"; but when you work in film and TV, "it's stop, wait, action, cut and then the edit. There's no instant gratification." ]

Reminder: Cy Feuer, Tony-winning Broadway producer [Guys and Dolls, How To Succeed..., many others], director, film producer [Cabaret, ACL], film score composer and long-time president and chairman of the League of American Theatres and Producers, will be remembered at a memorial on Thursday at 1 P.M. at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

[Photos: Maureen Stapleton at the Oscars, PHIL ROACH/Globe; The Little Foxes, MARTHA SWOPE]
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LAS VEGAS - Transition is as natural as the blazing sun in the world's most famous monument to reckless abandon. Change has become an everyday commodity in this Nevada desert oasis of bright neon and theme architecture. And it's become the philosophy at Cirque du Soleil. Their entertainment franchise, at least for now and in Las Vegas, is growing. It won't just be G-rated anymore. Their first entry: Zumanity: Another Side of Cirque du Soleil.

But before we get to thatÖ

When Nevada legalized gambling in the early 30s, "family" entertainment in Las Vegas meant something entirely different: well-heeled mobsters. Gaming was concentrated and not too tightly controlled in casinos along Fremont Street. Then Jewish American gangster "Bugsy" Siegel hit town with his plan for a lavish casino.

The late 50s brought the jolt of topless with the opening of Minsky's Follies. Segue, through several lifestyle changes, to Elvis, Liberace, Ole Blue Eyes and his Rat Pack, Wayne Newton and glamorous showgirls, all of whom established Vegas as the international capital of entertainment.

Jump forward to now and a whirl of fantastical mega-casino resorts where the headliners are Celine Dion [A New Day] and, among numerous others, Elton John [Red Piano]; and the "girlie" shows, Bally's Jublilee and Trop's Folies Bergere, with its topless dancers in exotic, towering headdresses.

The move toward family-friendly entertainment itself had been a reaction to falling gaming revenues when gaming became no longer being exclusive to Nevada. Over the 90's, hotels were imploded or rebuilt. Every major Strip casino had mammoth showrooms capable of just about any technical feat - and thrill rides, pirate battles, exploding volcanoes and dancing waters.

With Cirque du Soleil's entry to Vegas with MystÈre in 1993 , a new day really did dawn: the day of the mega superspectacular show.

Of course, spectacular was no stranger here - what with shows such as the Lido de Paris, Folies Bergere and Jubilee. But Cirque brought a sizzling and often elegant contemporary style and some Fellinesque innovation to what had become staid. It now has five resident shows here and is easily the dominant force in spectacle.

While there's still plenty of family entertainment, the 35 million plus tourists descending on the rechristened Sin City have the option of encounters with the under and undressed. Much of the Vegas emphasis has switched from Disneyesque to wild party clubs and erotica. Topless attractions have grown wider and wider to the point that clothing optional shows abound everywhere. In fact, they're not even just topless anymore.

Some thought Broadway musicals would be the future here, but in spite of the success of Mamma Mia [and the much more non-traditional Blue Man Group], other shows have floundered before finding large enough audiences to sustain the enormous costs of mounting entertainment or they are struggling to find audiences willing to come off the gaming floors or, in the case of locals, to the Strip. Even Phantom (Of the Opera) ~ The Las Vegas Spectacular, which was mounted with great hoopla at the Venetian for an astounding $40-million, has had some problems filling seats at two shows nightly.

The wave of the future, in addition to superspectacle, is erotica. It's not something you really ever whispered about here. But now they're shouting it from the Stratosphere tower and the Eiffel Tower.

Flamingo has Bottoms Up. The Riveria has Crazy Girls. The Hard Rock has it. The hot, hot Palms has it [and even whale suites fitted with stripper poles for the ultimate in private viewing]. Rio has it with a twist in Erocktica-Sex, Sweat and Rock N Roll, where the gals are not only topless but also perform hard rock.

Don't forget T.I., which is the contemporary slug for Treasure Island, where the pirate battles in the lagoon galleons will now be fought with an emphasis on T and A [female buccaneers].

That's just the Strip and three popular just-off Strip venues. It doesn't take into consideration the countless "gentlemen's" clubs, such as the legendary Club Paradise, with topless aerialists; and the aircraft hangar-sized $25-million Sapphire [with a 400-seat showroom called Off Broadway, where there ain't much Broadway, but plenty of Off, a huge and decent restaurant, colossal screens to watch sports, even skyboxes].

While Vegas may be a bachelor or pent-up married guy's dream of paradise, the bachlorettes and married gals have it good, too. For every "girlie" show, there's a guy show: the Aussie Thunder from Down Under at Excalibur, where the blokes swing some tools that could choke; Men from Olympus at the otherwise bachelor pad Olympic Gardens; Club Seven's Men: the Show; and the classic Chippendale's revue at Rio. Sapphire also offers something for the gals.

None of these, however, have the cache of the Strip's two competing brand-name provocative topless cabaret erotica, which also stress a lot of bottomless: Le Femme, the French Crazy Horse show at MGM Grand; and Cirque du Soleil's Zumanity: Another Side of Cirque at NYNY.

Yes, the roaring lion and CduS have gone from spectacular and superstar entertainers into a bold frontier of the saucy and naughty.

Tony Ricotta, the company manager for CduS's O since its 1998 opening, is a seven-year veteran of behind-the-footlights Broadway. He worked on such shows as Me and My Girl, the first Sweet Charity revival, Jerry's Girls and, among others, Aspects of Love.

"Tickets to the shows have really kicked up," he points out. "You can only do that so much over a period of time because you don't want to turn people off. It's a problem we're always addressing at Cirque."

That's not to say CduS doesn't have shows at high ticket prices; however, considering this is the new Vegas, and compared to Broadway, they're not prohibitive.

"At least," says Ricotta, "for those staying at the Bellagio, Mirage, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay or Caesar's. They're a different clientele than those who stay at smaller properties."

Ricotta thinks it's a misconception that Vegas visitors come with a large enough budget to see more than one high ticket show. "Our visitors fight that idea. They still expect the Strip to be paved with ninety-nine cent buffets. That's not the case. Vegas has become a destination where you have to expect to drop some cash."

Some of the numbers CduS has seen from the Convention and Visitor's Bureau and their own marketing research indicate that visitors used to see, say, three shows. That's dropped to where they see one, at most two.

"What that means," explains Ricotta, "is that where folks used to come with the intention of seeing MystÈre and O, they now have to make a choice on which one to spend the money on. Do I see MystÈre and get to do more [with my allotted travel money] or do I see MystÈre, O, K¿ and/or LOVE and get to do less?"

Spectacle in Vegas is like the mega casino resorts, shows, clubs and buffets, observes Ricotta. "Everyone is trying to outdo the other. With us [CduS], it's not so much a competition. Our shows are different enough from each other, but we don't attempt to out do the other. It's one for all and all for one. There's good-natured competition within the groups, but if we didn't have that, all the shows would be the same. Boring. And prospective audiences would say, ëI've seen Cirque, so why go see another Cirque?'"

O, which cost $25-million to mount, has been seen by over six million at the Bellagio. It was the first Cirque show where the Wow! factor went high octane and mega high tech. Written and directed by Belgium's Franco Dragone, who created 10 of CduS's productions before going competitive [Le RÈve at the Wynn*], brought a new level of performance to Cirque. Artists not only performed high up but also over and in a tank with 1.5 million gallons of water. It required more than three years of development, including 12 months of intensive rehearsals.

[ * It was Steve Wynn who brought CduS to Vegas when he was CEO of Mirage and T.I. and the developer of Bellagio. He later sold his casinos to MGM, now known as MGM Mirage.]

"The handwriting was on the wall after O," explains Ricotta. "The same creative team went to Orlando to do La Nubia, which is much more large-scale than our traveling shows but is essentially modeled on them. The next show was already predetermined to have a different creative team."

He adds, "It wasn't a matter of anyone at the top thinking anyone was getting stale. Since Cirque is expanding their horizons with more and more projects, they felt they needed to get fresh blood into the company. To do all of these as rapidly as we want and to stay healthy, you need a stable of creative minds you can pull from. So, as with K¿, LOVE and Zumanity, more and more directors, lighting designers, costumers are aboard now."

Considering that CduS has made Vegas a second home base to headquarters in Montreal, Z is part of a natural growth pattern. Acrobats, contortionists and aerialists doing daredevil stunts, even those doing them over and in water are nothing new for CduS.

Striptease on the Strip is not exactly a novelty to cause a rush to box offices. Z, which is estimated to have cost $15-million, just does it with style and as much class as it possible under the circumstances.

It's as adult mainstream as you can get if your idea of entertainment is gender-bending Mistresses of Seduction, nude gals and guys doing amazing [acrobatic and aerial] feats and engaging in simulated S&M, same-sex romance [even if presented in the form of a erotic tango] and, being polite, quite full-figured twins parading nude [Brazil's delightful eyeful, Luciene and Licemar Medeiros]. In this show, even the little guy [Brazilian acrobat Alan Jones Silva] has big feats.

Audiences for Zumanity and La Femme are mainstream and Adults Only. Z, for instance, since its 2003 debut has attracted over 1.5 million to its 1,259-seat NYNY theatre [cozy by CduS venue standards]. It's not all men at the erotic cabarets either. Not by a long shot.

The medium age of the couples, bachelors and bachelorettes is mid-30s. That's the desired visitor for casino operators. They sport designer clothes, drive or rent high-end sport cars, love to parteee and play table games. Best of all, they have pockets full of cash.

Hawaiian-born, heavily tanned and tattooed New Yorker Raven Olayver, or Raven O, is one of Z's seduction mistresses. The other is popular New York performer Joey Arias, who's been on leave this week entertaining at Fashion Week parties. Though they work more from improv than a scripted structure, their styles are quite different.

"Joey is more drag and I'm more androgynous," states Raven O, who has a body so solid that you might think he lives in the gym [he almost does]. "I really don't do drag. I come from a punk rock background. When I got the call to audition, I wasn't sure I wanted to do the show. Cirque is family entertainment. When I saw the show really was ëanother side' of Cirque - exotic, erotic, I bought in."

Zumanity bills its erotica as "conventional artists doing unconventional things. It's all about emotional freedom, natural beauty and the acceptance of differences."

States Raven O, "The idea was to be edgy and you can't be edgy if you don't provoke a few taboos."

He was actually in on the precursor to Z. The show's top billing goes to writer/directors Dominic Champagne and RenÈ Richard Cyr, however the root of the show came from Andrew Watson, a former Cirque acrobat who's now billed as "Director of Creation."

During the Saltimbanco national and international tours, Watson put together a late night show for clubs in some of the stopovers. "Andrew brought Joey and I out for that," says Raven O. "It was quite risquÈ, wild and crazy. Though it was separate from Cirque, we got to know the creative teams and the artists on the tour."

Visitors to Vegas tend to put their best freak on. They don't come here to go to church or museums. Many don't even make it 30 miles out of town to the Arizona border and awesome Hoover Dam. The motto is have a good time. What happens in Vegas really stays in Vegas, as they say.

"Our audiences pretty much let loose," adds Raven O. "In a couple of days, they'll be back in their day-to-day routine. Here they know they don't have to be themselves."

If you're easily offended, Zumanity is not the show for you.

"It's rare for anyone to walk out," reports Raven O. But it has happened. "Yes and I think, ëWhat are you crazy? You spend all that money and don't stay for the full show!'"

Z's costumes are by famed French designer Thierry Mugler. What there of them. They are quite sizzling and evocative, but this show's not shy about presenting nudity - some of it full frontal on female artists. Since it appears to be the last frontier in taboo in Vegas shows, a line that's not crossed is full-frontal for the hot hunks. It comes close, but it's mostly a lot of tease - which, needless to say, brings out the Chippendales' beast in female audience members.

In the show, Raven O pulls up audience members to participate in, shall we say, situations they're not, seemingly accustomed to. For instance, a tableaux that includes a multi-partnered orgy.

"I use my best instincts to size up whom to use," he states, "carefully observing how people react and respond to the warm up." He's seldom misfired. "They get into the swing of the moment, whether it's a ëstraight' or ëgay' bit. They know it's all in fun."

The "seduction" takes place in a romantic atmosphere that resembles a very large Art Nouveau bordello. The audience surrounds StÈphane Roy's curvilinear thrust stage in stools at the bar, traditional theatre seats and, in the front row, red sofas for two.

And, as you've come to expect in CduS shows, oh, what a stage. Tiny by comparison to The Beatles LOVE and K¿, Roy has loaded it with lifts and mechanisms that move independently of each other to keep the set in a constant state of flux.

While Z is quite sensual, it's also has tons of laugher. That starts even before the actual show with the ab fab warm-up comics Izzy and Dick [Nicky Dewhurst and Shannon Calcutt] who have you LOTF in convulsions with their gall and insanity.

Anyone who's ever been to Paris is aware of the cultural and erotic sensation of the Crazy Horse, which for over 50 years has exalted the female form.

La Femme [pronounced "La Fahm" and not titled Crazy Horse because of a so-named Vegas gentleman's club], in an intimate cabaret theatre at MGM Grand, is Zumanity's big-ticket competition.

Though smaller in concept, it has les girls - 12, all from France, dazzling costumes when they're being worn, choreography, multi-media effects and variety acts, such as a magician or comic. The 360-seat showroom is an exact replica of Crazy Horse's home on Paree's Avenue George V.

For a definitive overview of Las Vegas through the years, check out the DVD of PBS/American Experience's three-hour Las Vegas, An Unconventional History [also available with companion book], produced by Boston's WGBH, at www. pbs.org/amex/lasvegas. The DVD can be purchased at ShopPBS.org.

The scores of Zumanity, O and the upcoming Delirium, CduS's concert and first-ever arena show and one that's based on a musical rather than an acrobatic structure, which will play New York City's Madison Square Garden November 8 and 9, are available on CD on the Cirque du Soleil label and from http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/.

For access to earlier features on Cirque du Soleil's The Beatles' LOVE, click here:
BroadwayStars ; for the feature on their sci-fi fantansy, K¿, click here: BroadwayStars.

[To purchase Cirque's Zumanity, O, MystÈre and Crazy Horse's Le Femme tickets, go to any MGM Mirage box office (if you're in Vegas).

Zumanity is performed at NYNY Casino, Wednesday through Sunday at 7:30 and 10:30. Tickets are $65-$95 with the front row center "Duo Sofas" or loveseats $125 per person. To purchase, call (866) 606-7111 or (702) 740-6815 or go online at http://www.zumanity.com/ or http://www.nynyhotelcasino.com/.

O is performed at the Bellagio, Wednesday through Sunday at 7:30 and 10:30 pm. Tickets are $93.50-$150. To purchase call (888) 488-7111 or (702) 796-9999 or go online to http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/ or http://www.bellagio.com/

La Femme is performed at the MGM Grand, Wednesday-Monday at 8 and 10:30. dark Tuesdays. Tickets are $59 (includes program). To purchase, call (800) 929-1111 or (702) 891-7777 or go online at www.mgmgrand.com.]

[Zumanity photos: TOMAS MUSCIONICO; Raven O: PHILIP DIXON; Tony Ricotta: ELLIS NASSOUR; O Bateau: TOMASZ ROSSA]

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LAS VEGAS - The attitude toward tourism here in this desert oasis has changed. After an unsuccessful trial run, the movers and shakers along the Strip have changed direction. Entertainment has gone from being Disneyesque to that of yesteryear when the city was famed for being the center of unbridled excess.

But families still come, and there is no shortage of family-friendly entertainment. In addition to magic shows [some featuring white tigers], there's Celine Dion's A New Day and Elton John's Red Piano, Cirque du Soleil's spanking new The Beatles LOVE, their acquatic O and Mystere. Add the first spectacular with a storyline, KA, the thrill-a-second show introduced last year in the 1,950-seat MGM Grand Theatre.

The first part of your adventure starts as soon as you enter the mammoth auditorium [where EFX played from '95-'04] , brilliantly transformed into an intergalatic space Fritz Lang would be envious of. As an intergalatic visitor to this often weird metropolis, you are surrounded by soaring catwalks as battles ensue and people and objects fly in. And we haven't even gotten to the high-tech feats the stage is capable of.

KA, which premiered in February '05, is created and directed by theater and film director Robert Lepage [Bluebeard's Castle, The Far Side of the Moon]. The title is inspired by the ancient Egyptian belief in the "ka," an invisible spiritual duplicate of the body that accompanies every human being throughout life and into the next.

Okay, got that. Now add imperial birthed twins - a boy and a girl embarking on a journey to fulfill their destinies but who, in an interesting plot twist, are separated.

The story line is explained as a sort of "coming of age story as the twins encounter the duality of life, love, conflict, separation and reunion."

If you're not keeping up, it doesn't matter. It's easier to follow visually. And it's KA's spectacle and technical feats that make it a must see.

There is a sort of proscenium, but beyond that no traditional stage exists. You sit facing a bottomless void filled with floating clouds. Above and all around, the performers make their entrances.

Amid eye-popping pyrotechnics, the 80+ performers do incredible martial arts and acrobatic feats in one blockbuster sequence after another on five stage lifts. Two of them are 25X50' and called the Sand Cliff deck and the Tatami deck. All have the capability of operating independently of the other.

Attached at the rear to a gantry crane, they can spectacularly go up, down, out toward the audience and back. In the jawdropping "Battle" sequence, the Sand Cliff deck flats-out in a downward spiral to a totally vertical position as the seemingly fearless artists float down into the action via cables and bungee cables. When done in by the enemy, they fall to their fate [detaching themselves from the cables] for amazing 50' falls into the mosh pit below - hopefully onto very large airbags. What a landing!

If that's not dazzling enough, during the battle, the sand [which looks a lot like fake snow but turns out to be cork imported from Portugal] dissipates straight down. I wondered who had the [well-paying, I'm sure] job of cleaning that up. One essential backstage appliance is a giant vacuum cleaner.

Eric Heppell, the show's French Canadian artistic coordinator, states that where Franco Dragone broke the mold of the early CduS shows with O and having performers do their thing above and in a tank holding 1.5 million gallons of water.

"KA goes even further," he explains, "by telling a story that, even though there's no dialogue we can understand, has a narrative essence. Cirque shows have themes and story lines but they're ethereal. K¡ is the first time we have a rigid story line from start to finish."

It all takes place, maybe/perhaps, in a galaxy far, far away. That definitely seems to be the idea, anyway. It moves along quite like an epic superspectacular movie on the lines of a Star Wars.

"But," observes Erik Walstad, the show's technical coordinator, "the big difference here is that nothing you see is computer-generated. The mechanics may be guided by hundreds of computers, but everything is real." And sometimes pops right off the stage.

A film can show different perspectives of a scene. Even though KA is framed onstage, it offers many perspectives because of the stage's ability to configure in so many angles. Unlike in a two-dimensional film, you're never looking at something on a flat surface. There's this gigantic, black void and it morphs into many different playing surfaces.

Often the stage appears to be hanging in a void. Amazingly, thanks to that gantry crane, it can hang vertically and float upstage to downstage as if through thin air. The weight of the entire machinery [crane, arms, winches] is 300,000 lbs. The stages weigh 5,000 lbs. each.

"The physical capabilities and technical complexities of this theatre blows everyone right out of the water," states Heppell. No understatement there.

In CduS tradition, KA has no star. The technical feats, Mark Fisher's design, Marie-Chantale Vaillancourt's extraordinary costumes, Rene Dupere's vastly entertaining score, the fight choreography by Jacques Heim get the billing above the title.

Jonathan Deans is back as sound designer. He fills the KA Theatre with 524,150 total watts of amplifier power to pump the music and sound effects to nearly 5,000 speakers. Every seat has two speakers built into its headrest.

"KA audiences," states Walstad, "come expecting the WOW! Factor, and we don't disappoint them." He went on to say that many of the stunts in the show are dangerous. "But we have professional stunt persons doing them and we take all necessary precautions." They do, but often you can't see the safety wires, which adds to the edge-of-the-seat drama.

"Even after you've seen the show over and over again," Heppell proudly boasts, "it still grabs you. More than O, KA is the first to go beyond what world-wide audiences have come to expect from Cirque" and such memorable 's touring shows, such as Saltimbanco, AlegrIa, Dralion and Quidam.

"Those shows travel well in twenty-five to thirty containers on truck beds," he notes, "but when you want to mount a show that might require up to sixty containers, it gets too expensive to move about." But in Vegas, because budget and travel restrictions aren't an issue CduS "can offer creative directors the opportunity to be as creative as they dream to be."

In an apt aside, he says that the fact that CduS is still privately held, "is one reason we can afford to take risks creatively." Add in the gaming conglomerate with money pouring in from gaming profits "and the fact that Cirque is now a vastly popular international brand."

Heppell says that in Vegas has gone "above and beyond" in setting a new standard not only for spectacle but also entertainment.

Corteo, which recently had an extended run in New York, "with its many aerial entrances and displays [that require special heavy rigging] is very close to reaching the limits of how far you can go technically and production design-wise with a traveling show."

Cirque's new Vegas shows are even a huge distance from Mystere, CduS's first to open on the Strip. "There is nothing in K¡ you can relate to our Cirque roots."

[The score to KA has been released on CD. The show performs at 7:30 and 10:30 P.M., Tuesdays through Saturdays. Tickets are $99-$150. To purchase, go to the K¿ box office - if you're in Vegas, or call (800) 929-1111 or (702) 891-7777 or go to http://www.ka.com/ or http://www.mgmgrand.com]

Next: Cirque du Soliel's erotic cabaret Zumanity and O.

If you missed CduS's The Beatles LOVE, visit : BroadwayStars

[Photos: 1, 2 and 4: TOMAS MUSCIONICO/Cirque du Soleil; 3: ELLIS NASSOUR]

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LAS VEGAS - This sand pit in the scorched Nevada desert has a knack for reinventing itself. It has gone through many cycles, sometimes in less than a year.

Ten years ago, with gambling proliferating through all but two states, it seemed like a great idea when the Las Vegas powers-that-be got together and decided to segue from Sin City to The City of Family Entertainment. And it worked for a while. But, especially after the drop in tourism following the events of 9/11, those same powers saw doom approaching.

This boom town of glittering overkill has something for everyone - from the sublime to the ridiculous. The pseudo-Disneyesque theme park drew tourists, but instead of gambling they were gawking at Bellagio's dancing waters, Treaure Island's swashbuckling pirates, Caesar's moving statues, Mirage's exploding volcano and Siegfried and Roy's prestidigitations and white tigers, Luxor's sphinx and giant pyramid, Rio's Carnival in the Sky and Sahara's NASCAR complex.

Don't overlook faux Paris with its Eiffel Tower, faux Venice with its Grand Canal, faux NYNY with its skyscraper wings and Coney rollercoaster, Stratosphere's tallest tower West of the Mississsippi with its rooftop thrill rides or the downtown Freemont Experience. Perhaps the unlikeliest entertainment pairing of all is gambling and top caliber thrill and animal acts performed high above the casino floor of Circus Circus.

Revenues were down. What was missing was the vital ingredient for success: gamblers, especially that much sought after target range of 25- to 30-olds - those young, carefree males who think nothing of flying themselves in for a weekend of huge stogies, wicked fun and games; and the well-heeled dudes from Palm Springs and L.A. in their fancy sport cars who drink themselves into excited frenzy and risk stacks of wampum in the frivolous pursuit of Lady Luck.
So five years ago, it was back to Sin City and "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas." Mayor Oscar Goodman proclaimed, "The brand we're creating is one of freedom based on sensuality. The bottom line is people can come, go to the brink of whatever's legal [and just about everything is] without having anyone look over their shoulder."

While this reinvention was taking place, Vegas was also undergoing another transformation. Since the opening of Caesar's in 1960, The Strip resorts have become known not only for imploding the old for the megacomplexes but also for spectacular entertainment.

In Vegas, "spectacular" is a state of mind. Everything is "spectacular," so to be spectacular you really have to pull out all the stops. That's why Broadways shows, such as Avenue Q and Hairspray didn't fare too well; and why the bets are still on if the $40-million Phantom ~ The Las Vegas Spectacular, which is Olivier and Tony-winning theater but not in the ballpark of Vegas-type spec, can last the necessary 10 years to recoup its cost the $30-millon constructions costs of its jewel box theatre at the Venetian.

Even the two show-horse spectacular standard bearers Jubilee!, celebrating 25 years on The Strip, at Bally's [where in addition to a tribute to Fred and Ginger, the Titanic hits an iceberg, compartments flood and, amid thunderous pyrotechnics, the ship sinks] and the Folies Bergere at Tropicana [where topless showgirls in towering plumed headdresses parade in the type of production numbers that Busby Berkeley would envy] are showing their age and filling less and less of their gigantic showrooms.

The Lido de Paris, which had spectacle coming out of spectacle, not to mention topless and often bottomless gals and guys, is no longer. In its heyday, long before John Napier thought of having a faux helicopter hover in Miss Saigon, helicopters [not to mention airplanes and Zeppelins] flew high above the Stardust [soon also to be a relic as it will be imploded for yet another mega resort] showroom while onstage there were trains, earthquakes, erupting volcanoes and bursting dams.

When Nevada legalized gambling in the early 30s, "family" entertainment meant something entirely different. When Jewish American gangster "Bugsy" Siegel hit town with his plan for a lavish casino, gaming was concentrated downtown in casinos along Fremont Street. Clientele consisted largely of construction crews building Hoover Dam 30 miles away on the Colorado River at the Arizona border.

Headliners such as Elvis, Liberace, Wayne Newton and Ole Blue Eyes and his Rat Pack helped establish Vegas as the world capital of entertainment.

The late 50s brought the jolt of topless performers with the opening of Minsky's Follies. It's grown wider and wider to the point that clothing optional shows abound just about everywhere. None, however, have the cache of The Strip's two competing brand-name intimate cabaret revues, which also stress a lot of bottomless: Cirque du Soleil's Zumanity at NYNY and Le Femme, the all-French Crazy Horse show, at MGM Grand.

Paris' Crazy Horse has long been known for its erotica, but Cirque du Soleil, that worldwide Canadian brand of sunny, Felliniesque big top extravaganza? Zumanity is billed as "another side of Cirque du Soleil" and it certainly is. [More on this in the next installment.]

Just as this gaming and hedonism oasis consistently reinvented itself to draw tourists willing to part with their money, so too has Strip entertainment transitioned to a new plateau of spectacular spectacular. The luxury sandpit's dominant force in Strip entertainment is not transferring abbreviated Broadway hits to town but the ever more spectacular spectacular of Guy LalibertÈ and his Montreal-based CduS. There are now five resident shows here.

It's not all bad news for Broadway. One of the biggest draws on the Strip is the Abba musical Mamma Mia!, a hit since it opened in 2003. Coming soon are The Producers and Spamalot.

Some might think that Cirque is oversaturating the Vegas market. Eric Heppel, the artistic coordinator for CdS's spectacular spectacular K¿, disagrees. "Each of our shows has a different identity. MystËre [at Treasure Island] is typical of our early touring shows. Since it opened, we've been breaking the mold of what Cirque's known for. There's been a progression in the maturity of the projects and what can be done with today's state-of-the-art technology."

If the secret to success is branded entertainment using advanced technology, CdS's latest installment, in the gargantuan rebuilt Siegfried and Roy Theatre at Mirage, The Beatles LOVE is the ultimate show business marriage. It merges the innovative creative minds of Cirque with a celebration of the musical legacy of the biggest, most famous and best-selling rock ën roll group of all time.

There are trapeze and trampoline sequences but for the first time CduS has unified a show around music from one source, and music that's known the world around. LOVE runs a typical Vegas 90 minutes, but it has twice the scenes [24] than any other Cirque show.

Heppell draws an interesting comparison between Broadway and Vegas. "The world comes to Broadway," he says. "It's just that more of the world comes to Vegas and they come with higher expectations. While our shows have themes and storylines, they can't have a lot of dialogue. They can't. They have to be accessible to our wider audience."

Make that: dialogue in English. As any Cirque fan knows, the various shows invent fascinating languages that are used in melodic chants and dirges.

The biggest challenge was getting Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison to lend their music.

Jason Pritchard, LOVE's artistic coordinator, reports that turned out not to be such a great challenge. "The show became a partnership with the Beatles' Apple Corps Limited. It was born out of the personal friendship and trust between George Harrison and [CduS founder] Guy LalibertÈ."

The fact that Cirque is a known and respected commodity didn't hurt. And then there's that old adage: If it [in this case, the music] stays locked up, who will hear it? How will the catalog make money?

Everyone thought Yoko Ono, obsessed with protecting Lennon's legacy, would be the stumbling block. But she wasn't. Starr and Olivia Harrison quickly came aboard; and, last, but certainly not least, McCartney.

With Sir George Martin, who produced most of the Beatles' albums and who's affectionately called the fifth Beatle, and his son Giles onboard to produce and mix the music, trust was there. The Fab4 always believed his sensibilities were very much close to theirs.

"We were a bloody great band," says McCartney. "I'm proud of the music we made. When it was suggested we partner with Cirque, it reminded me that over the years I'd given some thought to remixing our music. I always decided there wasn't much reason for it. ëLeave it alone,' I said. But when Cirque approached, I thought if ever there was a reason, this was it."

When Sir George sought his blessing for what he hoped to do, McCartney said, "I told him to go further. Do some strange things. I like experimentation." Once he heard what the Martins had done, "I realized our music wasn't finished. The Cirque show gives it a new slant and a new life."

Dominic Champagne, who directed and wrote the original concept, explains that his vision for LOVE "was to create a Beatles experience rather than a Beatles story. I wanted to take the audience on an emotional journey rather than a chronological one. I wanted to explore the landscapes and experiences that marked the group's history."

He adds that whenever he had doubts, "I checked with Paul. He never had anything to complain about. When I asked if we had his blessings for our approach, he said yes."

There were no disagreements or problems. "We've always liked associating ourselves with slightly crazy people," laughs McCartney. "Circus people are slightly crazy. Artists are slightly crazy. We were no different. We were slightly crazy."

In a nutshell, the essence of The Beatles LOVE is taking audiences on a song-by-song magical mystery tour into the heart and soul of what the Beatles wrote and composed. It's a journey through their exploration of the aesthetic, political, anti-war and spiritual trends of the wild, rebellious 60s.

There's the message of revolution to change the world, to free your mind; of peace; of attraction [as in "Something (In the Way She Moves)"] and love being all you need. So it seems quite natural that LOVE is presented in a spectacle that's slightly mad and madcap. The approach is compatible with the exuberant and irreverent youth of that time and the Fab4's music.

While there are some trademark CduS elements, such as aerial entrances and performance and acrobatics [on in-stage trampolines and high-flying Rollerbladers], the emphasis is on high-energy, freestyle dance. And, of course, the Beatles' vocals.

As much WOW! as you hear from audiences over the lavish visual feast and the amazing physical aspects [which include total surround sound and H.D. projections on 100' wide screens], the Cirque WOW! factor is mostly missing.

Particularly impressive numbers are "Here Comes the Sun," "Come Together," "A Day in the Life, "Hey, Jude," "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "All You Need Is Love." But there were a couple of bits in the incredibly staged "Lady Maddona" number that I found less than impressive and tasteless, especially the dancer stomping around in mod overalls. It seemed like a flashback to the Hollywood image of blacks kids in the South in the 30s and 40s.

The show, estimated to cost $60-million, is inhabited by a 60+ cast of colorful characters in extravagant costumes doing freestyle choreography [sometimes just stomping], but in spite of storylines that bring to life the lyrics of the songs, it's all about the music.

No expense was spared there, and that's the best and biggest payoff of the show.

Audio head Gavin Whitely discusses the $100-million redesign of what was the Siegfreid explains, "The structural steel and three of the walls are original to the Siegfried and Roy Theatre. The South wall was demolished and rebuilt thirty feet back. The hanging ceiling was removed and now our technical grid spans the entire space. That alone makes the auditorium seem much taller."

Jean Rabasse's design concept was to surround the stage in a "bubble." He wanted the theatre interior and set design to be intertwined so it would be impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. The objective was "to put the audience as close to the performers as possible. The furthest row from the stage is ninety-eight feet."

He had the classical 1,500-seat proscenium gutted and placed the action in the center, in a configuration of a Union Jack. Rabasse claims, "You could come and see LOVE four times and see something quite different each time."

Sure, go back eight times - if you win big at the tables or slots. And who doesn't?

It's claimed that there are no bad seats. True, the action takes place around you; so there are unobstructed views. But 98' isn't close. You're in Vegas. Be a high rolller and don't opt for the cheaper seats. Hint: Some of the best views are higher up from the front of the overhanging rows.

The 2,013-seat auditorium boasts a stage complex miraculously capable of doing just about anything.

Giga [sound] studio engineer Gavin Whitely says, "You can't build a theatre or show of this grandeur in New York or just about anywhere else. Even the stage of Radio City Music Hall, which is considered pretty incredible, can't do what ours is technically capable of. That stage has three elevators. We have five."

With excavations, there's much more depth under the stagehouse. In addition, with five lift options, the stage can seem to do miraculous things. This also gives the stagehands and set decorators the ability to be setting the stage for the next scene some 25 feet below the playing level. When the current sequence finishes, it's like someone ques "Open sesame!" and the floors part. While that element of the show descends, another slides center and up, up, up into view.

One thing for certain: you won't have a hard time hearing the music.

Sir George felt that the panoramic sound design would be the closest anyone would get to hearing the Fab4 play live again - and the closest anyone could get to being in the studios with them.The 2,013-seat theatre features a stage miraculously capable of doing just about anything.
There are eight sound system zones, each with dedicated, sophisticated systems capable of functioning independently. In all: 6,341 speakers, and not a whisper of an echo. In addition to the massive house speakers, every seat is equipped with speakers over both shoulders for real surround sound. There's also a speaker in the back of the seat in front of you.

"To maintain sound quality," explains Whiteley, "there are detailed sound spot checks every performance day. Acoustically, the house is well designed - something that's not often the case on Broadway. There it's like the producers give the sound engineer a one hundred thousand dollar budget and three days to get it right. This room was studied, restudied and studied again."

Pritchard states, "Jonathan Deans, our sound designer, knew the acoustics had to be beyond perfect. It's a Beatles show. The audiences, which range from grandparents to grandchildren, that come knew the music. They arrive with a high expectation and we try not to disappoint them."

To create the LOVE musical soundscape, the Martins spent two years constructing the music by combing, combining and remixing the Beatles' master tapes from the Abbey Road sessions. A great discovery was some 13 hours of session chatter between the Fab4. Snippets of that is used quite innovatively in the production for collages of voice-over narrative.

The studio set up at the Mirage and, during the rehearsals in Montreal [September '05-January '06] was as close as possible a duplicate to what Sir George had at Abbey Road. "The same hardware, the same size speakers, everything just as it was," reports Whiteley.

Pritchard counts 28 numbers in the show, "but if you tally in all the musical fragments it comes to about a hundred." As an example of how this could be, he pointed out that in the "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" sequence, you hear that tune and bits of twelve others.

"The only thing that hasn't come from the sessions," Whiteley points out, "is an original string score that Sir George composed to accompany George [Harrison]'s guitar and voice recording of ëWhile My Guitar Gently Weeps.'"

One of the challenges of the job, says Sir George, "was getting the balance right. Giles and I wanted to make sure there were enough good, solid hit songs, but we didn't want it to be a ëBest of' catalog. We also felt it important to put in some lesser-known but interesting Beatles music."

The younger Martin adds, "Our goal was to achieve a sense of drama with the music so audiences would feel they're intimate with the band. So it had to be Beatles' music as it had never been heard before. Since people are being knocked out by what they are hearing, I know we succeeded."

However, things do go down. Pritchard and Whiteley sit side by side every performance at a massive control epicenter, on guard - watching, listening. Controlling the show are hundreds of computers, with back ups of the back ups! In the dark, with dogtracks in the flooring and stage elevators going up and down, the performing space can be dangerous for the artists.

"But," Whiteley notes, "during lighting transitions and while the stages are being reconfigured, the movement of the performers is closely timed and watched by on and off stage managers. One of the most incredible things is the way the Martins set up the music, which is constant from beginning to end [as in most Vegas shows, there is no intermission]."

Their master control board, explains Pritchard, gives them the ability to stretch or pause the music. "Unlike popping in a CD and letting it run," he explains, "we're able to monitor the action onstage and audience response and start or stop at any given moment."

They feel a heavy responsibility. "A large vision was created by Dominic and the Martins," says Pritchard. "We have state of the art technology, but we have to be vigilant to make sure it's up to the task at every performance."

Adds Whiteley, "The Martins put together such an amazing musical experience. We want to maintain it so every audience is a great honor."

Speaking of experiences, as one might expect, The Beatles LOVE has been a poignant, moving one for McCartney, Starr, Ono and Mrs. Harrison, where it's not always been paths strewn with roses and lollipops. From all indications, it's been smooth sailing.

"We're missing John and George," states McCartney. "It's been difficult at times, but the joy and beauty of the music transcends all of that." For him, as for LOVE's audiences, the show has moments that transcend reality and puts him back in the moment when it was all happening.

"I was privileged to have been there from the first track to the last track," he intones. "I can hardly believe it. I wake up some mornings and say, ëI was in the Beatles?' It's a slightly strange feeling. There are only four people in the world - in the universe - who can say that. And I was one."

[A CD of the remixed music of the Fab4 will be available next month. The Beatles LOVE is performed at the Mirage, Thursday through Monday, with two shows nightly at 7:30 and 10:30. Tickets are $69-$150. To purchase, go to the LOVE box office - if you're in Vegas, or call (800) 963-9634, go online at http://www.thebeatleslove.com/, http://www.thebeatles.com/ or http://www.mirage.com/. ]

Next: Cirque du Soleil's superspectacular K¿ : BroadwayStars

Coming up: CduS's erotic cabaret Zumanity and O.

[Photos: 1 and 3: TOMAS MUSCIONICO/Cirque du Soleil; 2: ELLIS NASSOUR]

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