beLIEve

Awhile back, we decided that we were going to use Spencer's 2 free Cirque du Soleil tickets that he gets each year on the one and only show we haven't seen yet, the newest edition to the Cirque family and my previous, very short lived, very strange employer. We decided to see this show despite all the drama they put me through during my short stint as a pigeon trainer and more importantly, all of the HORRIBLE reviews we heard about the show from the trained and untrained eye alike. We went last night. And I normally would write about it right away, but I needed some time to let it all sink in. This show was like a bad car accident you might pass on the interstate that is causing a huge traffic jam just because of all the gapers...its brutal, but you can't help but watch it...I don't know how else to describe it, so I decided to use bullet points to point out the highlights and lowlights of this show:
Thumbs UP!
__________

*The theater was beautiful inside and out (although I already knew this having been there before during work.)

*There were 4 "clowns" in the show in true Cirque fashion that were absolutely hilarious even when everything else on stage was totally and completely lame and/or idiotic. They made the entire show for us!
*The lighting was pretty cool looking...even the luminary professional I attended the show with concurred.

*Oh man did that ONE scene with my 50-100 (depending on how many are still alive) pigeons flying across the theater ROCK! :)
*The dancers were pretty talented, though their numbers were quite odd and at times disturbing. (See below.)

Thumbs DOWN!
______________

*The first 25 minutes, Criss Angel came out and started shouting at people to get pumped up like it was some kind of rock concert.
*The intro was 25 minutes!
*Have you ever seen a Cirque show? People fly across the sky all the time and I can see the cords they are flying from and its still awe-inspiring...bad idea to levitate someone WHILE/shortly after/shortly before some acrobats are bungee-ing through the air! It takes away from the "magic" of levitation.
*Another thing that takes away from the magic of levitation...when I can see the "invisible" cords that are helping you levitate....
*Watching Criss Angel move across the stage watching his feet to find his marks so he knew where to stand...
*The fact that SEVERAL women were screaming every chance they had, "MARRY ME CRISS!" when he emits a HEAVY gay vibe (no offense to my homosexual friends...) and is quite clearly using that "girl next door" as a beard.

*There was more video on a jumbo screen than there were actual acts on stage and most of that video was from his stupid Mind Freak show.
*Dancers dancing around and "eating" Criss Angels dead, bloody corpse (although the IDEA behind this was clever, it was disgusting and disturbing).
*The lack of consistency with the "storyline" of the show...he gets electrocuted in the beginning (after the 25 minute intro of course), and he's allegedly in a coma and so now we're taking a trip inside his mind (again, another clever idea...), but at random throughout the show, he starts talking to the audience and screaming "ARE WE HAVING A GOOD TIME?!" or "ARE YOU PUMPED UP YET?!" like he's not in a coma-state-of-mind that we're traveling through AT ALL!
*He made several references to how this was a "family show" or "there are kids in the audience so we gotta keep it clean" and then he would curse, drop f-bombs, degrade women, make sexual references verbally and visually, etc. Like he cares if there are kids in the audience...(though this could take me on a whole other fired-up tangent about how I feel about parents who think Las Vegas is a good place to take the kids on vacation, but I digress...)
*Criss Angel was in the show.

As we were walking out of the theater, I listened very carefully to those around me also leaving after just having seen this show. Crickets. Usually when leaving ANY performance type show you can almost always hear people talking about how awesome it was or what their favorite part was, but this time, NOTHING. Oh wait, I did hear 2 guys behind me talking. One of them said, "I think that was a really bad show" (like he wasn't exactly sure...) His friend said, "yeah, I didn't really see anything magical, I could tell how they did every trick...maybe it was just bad because our seats were so close." I turned around and gave them a sympathetic "I'm so sorry you actually paid for these tickets"/"no, you're right the show was awful" look and kept walking.

So while Spencer tells me that the head honcho of Cirque and all of the upper folks in the company are determined to stand by this show and its 10 year contract at the Luxor, and as genius as I think these guys are, I think their best bet is to keep the show going without their headliner. But then again, if my opinion mattered, I would be the one making the big bucks, so whatever. To those of you reading this curious about the show, I wouldn't even recommend it to my worst enemy. (Ok, maybe a little dramatic, but really don't waste your money. I got in for free and I regret not ever being able to get those 90 minutes of my life back.)

And on that note, I will thank the good Lord ONE more time, that I closed the door on that opportunity when I had the chance, before all of this melee.