All You Need Is Love

Fifteen years ago I went on a girls trip to Las Vegas with my friend Candi.  During our stay at Treasure Island we saw the show Mystere performed by Cirque du Soleil.  I had never seen anything like it before and was mesmerized by the acrobatic, aerial, and trapeze performances accompanied by fabulous live music (I especially liked the taiko drums).  I absolutely loved it!  Several years ago the Beatles collaborated with Cirque du Soleil to create a similar show called Love using the recorded music of the Beatles (their long-time producer, George Martin, gave Cirque du Soleil access to original Abbey Road Studio recordings so the music is absolutely amazing) at the Mirage.  I immediately wanted to see this show!  Since I loved Mystere so much, I figured that a Cirque du Soleil show featuring the music of my all-time favorite band would be an epic experience (it was).  I have wanted to see this show for so long (I tried to see it on my spring break trip to Southern Utah but for some reason it was dark that entire week) but I finally made it happen last Friday while I was in Cedar City for the Shakespeare Festival (Las Vegas is a two hour drive from Cedar City).  I loved this show so much!  Every single song and performance was amazing but a few of them stand out in my mind.  The stage is in the round and, at the opening of the show, it is divided into quadrants by blue scrims.  Four performers dressed in blue slowly began climbing ropes suspended from the ceiling to "Because," a slow song sung a capella.  In my opinion, it was a bit anticlimactic.  Then the scrims fell and "Get Back" played while men and women bounced perpendicularly on bungee cords.  The women seemed to drop straight down from the men and it was incredible!  I also loved the performance to "Something."  A man wearing black performed an acrobatic routine while four women dressed in white flew around him on trapezes.  He interacted with them but they all seemed tantalizingly out of reach.  So beautiful and atmospheric!  During the song "Within You Without You" a group of children played on a bed in the center of the stage.  Then a huge white parachute spread around them and throughout the audience, literally covering most of them.  I don't know what the people covered by the parachute saw, but I was sitting in an upper row and it looked like the bed was bouncing on a fluffy white cloud.  I actually felt like I was floating on the cloud and it was surreal, to say the least.  The very next song was "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and strings of LED lights descended from the ceiling while a girl dressed in silver flew around the theater on a trapeze.  The lights blinked on and off and it literally felt like I was surrounded by stars.  For "Here Comes the Sun," a globe of lights descended from the ceiling and four women dressed in yellow performed aerial dances on suspended ropes.  At the end each woman tumbled down her rope one after the other, perfectly timed to the last four guitar riffs in the song.  It was spectacular!  During "Come Together," four couples danced an acrobatic routine while spotlights flashed on them individually in syncopation with the music.  I was blown away by the performances and I literally had tears in my eyes during the encore, "All You Need Is Love" with images of the Beatles projected on scrims.  Now I want to see it again (I almost bought a ticket to the 9:00 show that same night).  Words do not do justice to this spectacle and I highly recommend Love to anyone who is a fan of the Beatles!