I was really looking forward to seeing the Cirque du Soleil performance of “Love” – the epic Beatles production of which I wrote about the soundtrack here – on the evening of February 10. Our tickets were for the late show at the Sahara, so Bob, the Wileys, and I had plenty of time to walk over to the casino following our dinner at Battista’s – and our jam-packed day of visiting the Hoover Dam and other adventures in Nevada. We had excellent seats near the front of the stage. It was a theater-in-the-round style staging and we could see everything from where we were sitting.
The show began with a rather artistic representation of Liverpool during WWII, culminating with the emergence of rock and roll in the early 1950’s and the Beatles movement that came right behind it. The Ed Sullivan years were represented with a performance of “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” The lights lowered and sihouetted shadows of the Beatles came out on stage. The effect was cool. As we moved into the more psychadelic songs like “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” the theatrics really broke loose with some daredevil stunts high above the stage. During “Help!”, rollerskaters took the stage performing up and down huge ramps.
And that’s where the story ends. Precisely eleven songs into the show, the sound went dead
and the fire alarm went off – along with a voice that we could hardly understand. After about ten minutes of utter confusion on what to do, a performer came on stage and indicated that the alarm was false and that the show would resume. He had to yell this because the sound system wasn’t functioning. Then the sprinklers began to go off in two areas of the theater. This spooked enough people that they finally began to evacuate (as seen in the photo at right whick I illegally snapped when the pandemonium began to break loose). If there had really been a fire, we all would have probably been screwed.
We exited back into the casino (instead of outside), conveniently through the gift shop, with the promise from the casino that our tickets would be refunded to our credit cards. This sucked. Bob called me the “kiss of death.” But on a bright note, I guess, we got to see about one-third of the show for free.
Our Vegas adventures will continue…
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