The Beatles Love Full Show

[Mirtha Hinrichs]

TheBeatles LOVE paid tribute to the band's artistic achievements, using real and fictional characters to explore the song's themes.The Beatles LOVE featured several scenes inspired by the poetry of the song's lyrics with 60 performers who excel in aerial performances, extreme sports, and urban and freestyle dance.

Experience the Fab Four like you never have before! LOVE reimagines the music and history of The Beatles, taking you from the high energy shows at The Cavern all the way to the final moments of the Rooftop show in a way that only Cirque du Soleil could.

The chorus to Yesterday infamously came to Paul McCartney in a dream; enter a dreamscape where melancholic aerial acrobats explore the idea of loss, love, and rebirth to the tune of one of the most beloved songs of all time!

For years Ihave told friends that any of Cirque du Soleil's shows represent the bestentertainment for your dollar to be found anywhere in the world. I love concerts, theater, sporting events,and yes, a circus. And to say thatCirque combines the best of all of these events still sells them short. Cirque du Soleil stands in a class byitself. Over a year ago, when I heardthat Cirque had struck a deal to produce a show based on the music of The Beatles, I wasthrilled, and couldn't wait to see the result.

Many years ago, the idea for LOVE wasborn out of a personal friendship between Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Lalibertand the late George Harrison. In June of2006, LOVE premiered in LasVegas at The Mirage, and I have been dying to see it eversince. While at the 2007 CES show, theAudioholics team took time out of our busy schedule to attend a performance.

Beatles producer Sir George Martinand his son Giles Martin were brought on as Music Directors for theunprecedented project that would take the music of The Beatles and compile itinto the soundtrack for a ninety minute Cirque du Soleil stage production. The Martins spent two years in Abby RoadStudios constructing the music for LOVE using the original master recordingsfrom The Beatles catalog. They combinedbits and pieces of songs, alternate vocal takes, and in studio banter thatresulted in the mash-up that became the soundtrack for the show. There are 25 full songs, as well as more than100 other fragments in the production.And trust me, you have NEVER heard The Beatles like thisbefore.

But before you purists out therefreak out, take note. In interviews, theMartins have made clear that their main focus was to present an opportunity forpeople to get as close as possible to hearing the band play live again. "The Beatles, above all else, were a greatrock band. A lot of people listen toThe Beatles in a conventional way (radio, MP3 player or car, for example) butnever in such a space. With the hugeamount of speakers in the theatre, I think we will achieve a real sense of dramawith the music, the audience will feel as though they are actually in the roomwith the band."

If you have ever attended one ofCirque's resident shows in LasVegas, you are aware of how impressive theirpurpose-built theaters are. They areabsolutely bleeding-edge in technology.Set Designer Jean Rabasse completely gutted the existing 1,500-seatproscenium layout theater at The Mirage and focused everything towards thecenter of the room in an in-the-round layout.The stage has six entrance and exit points, with four tracks to carryartists and props in and out of the theater.There are four control booths, one in each corner of the theater.

As large as the theater is, there isan amazing feeling of intimacy obtained due in part to the fact that thefurthest row from the stage is only 98 feet away. There are over 600 stage and acrobatic propsin the show, and more impressive is the fact that most every item on the stagehas a function beyond being purely decorative.There are nine lifts and eight automated tracks and trolleys that cansimultaneously move 24 props, set elements or performers, and they provide theproduction with 140 different ways to put a performer into the air. Cirque claims that this is the mosttechnologically advanced theater ever built, and I believe them. Yet all of this technology is largely hidden,never distracting from the performance.(Unless of course you are a geek like me, craning your neck to try andsee how they can possibly be doing that, whatever that happens tobe at any given moment!)

And how about the "huge amount ofspeakers," you ask? In this case, "hugeamount" means over 12,000 speakers in the theater! Yes, you read that right. Each of the 2,013 seats surrounding the stage(in a 360-degree configuration) is fitted with six speakers. Above the stage were speaker arrays similarto what you would see at an arena rock show.As we walked along the hallway that opened into and surrounded thecircumference of the theater, we noticed acoustic panels on the walls seamlesslyintegrated with the decor. It wasobvious that this room was all about sound.

There are eight sound system zones inthe theater, each with dedicated Meyer M1D Stereo Line Arrays capable offunctioning independently of one another. Each zone provides the listener withfully immersive 360-degree surround sound that can be precisely placed one footin front of the listener or up to 80 feet away in most directions and moved inany direction.

I was anxious as I went into the showabout how this would all be used. I mustadmit that I expected to experience all kinds of gimmicky use of the technology,but was really surprised to find that that was not the case at all. Sonically, things would go from mono AM radiospeaker to arena rock show seamlessly.It was never a distraction, but rather totally immersive. I was astounded at how great this material -some of it 40 years old - sounded over a modern, high-tech sound system.

From the moment you walk into thetheater, before the show ever starts, the visuals begin to grab you. As we waited for the show to begin, Clint hadalready begun to assess the projectors that were in use, painting the room incolor. The theatre has ten 12,000-lumenprojectors for each of the two huge 2,000-square-foot panoramic screens, plusfour 832-square-foot semi-transparent screens that are moved by eight motors andserved by four 16,000-lumen projectors.Francis Laporte, Video Projection Designer for LOVE, claims that theprojection system "goes beyond anything ever attempted in any permanenttheatrical production in terms of its size, power, complexity andcapabilities."

"The first thing I noticed were thedual-stacked projectors, sequenced in a double row of five - all perfectlycalibrated and aligned to form a single wide screen. They pulled this off notonce, but twice as a screen adorned both sides of the "in-the-round" stage. Whenyou can get 10 projectors in perfect calibration and positioning to form acohesive image - you've impressed me to no end. And I tried, HARD, to find aseam or color mismatch - there simply weren't any.

Projectors played a major part inthe LOVE production and the technology employed was outstanding. From theopening number to the final tune, scrims were placed at strategic placesthroughout the floor to allow additional projectors to place images around theroom as part of the show. At one point a very thin screen was pulled across thestage and dual projectors were utilized to give the (very real) impression thatthe Beatles were actually silhouetted, walking across the stage and having aconversation. The effect was so real that Tom (sitting to my right) couldn'tunderstand how they did it without a screen. This was no doubt due to theprojection of perfectly synced shadows and an incredibly thin membrane screenwhich worked just perfectly in the dim light as to appear almost invisible (Icaught the screen in action later in the show or else I would be as dumbfoundedas anyone).

Lighting in general was outstandingand designed in a meticulous manner to compliment wardrobes, direct attentionand generally set the mood depending upon which act was taking place. Theoverall use of fog, lighting and special effects took the show to a level Ihadn't seen since... well, the La Nouba (Cirque de Soleil) show in Orlando. "Impressive"somehow doesn't cut it."

Prior to seeing the show, I hadnever owned Beatles records. I waspretty familiar with their material (how can you not be?), but never foundmyself wanting to sit and listen to them.I always used to smile when discussions began about The Beatles being"the foundation of popular music today" or "the greatest band ever," and mostly held an indifferent attitude. After seeing LOVE, I went straight out aftergetting home and bought the soundtrack CD/DVD-Audio combo pack, and I have beenlistening to it regularly. I can finallysay without reservation, especially to those musical friends of mine who havegrieved over the years at my lack of interest in The Beatles, "I get it." The music of the Beatles is RELEVANT, whichis as high a compliment as I am capable of offering to an artist or band. The music, the recordings, theinstrumentation, the lyrics, the song structures - everything - has morethan stood the test of time!

I consider LOVE to be a destinationevent. By that I mean that it is worthbuilding a trip to LasVegas around.Plan a weekend in Vegas, and get tickets to see LOVE and one of the otherresident Cirque du Soleil shows - KA, O, or Mystere. I promise you will not be disappointed.

Over the years J. has constantly found himself to be an "early-adopter," spending way too much money on "new" technologies such as Compact Disc, LaserDisc, and DVD. He is one of the few people who actually purchased (and still owns) a CORE programmable remote control (bonus points if you remember this product).

The magical friendship we have had with Cirque du Soleil over the last 18 years has given millions of people from around the world a chance to experience The Beatles' music in a way we would never have conceived without their artistry and creative vision.

We wanted to give our love, thanks and appreciation to the show's brilliant cast and crew.

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