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Check out exclusive details about the production, plus a full track listing for the show. Also, view a gallery of the multi-million dollar stage setup.
With eight weeks to go before the opening of Love -- the new Cirque du Soleil show based on the music of the Beatles -- the custom-built theater in Las Vegas' Mirage Hotel is swarming with activity. Underneath the stage, young men in moptop wigs chatter in different languages. High above a piano filled with bubbles, a trapeze artist lies flat on a swing, rocking back and forth while waiting for lighting to be set. Mostly, it's the usual stop-and-start frenzy of rehearsal, but the pressure is cranked up a bit because in just a few days, Yoko Ono, Olivia Harrison and representatives from Apple Records will be flying in for the show's first full run-through.
With a cast of sixty and a crew just short of 100, Love is Cirque's most ambitious extravaganza to date -- and the first time ever that the recordings of the Beatles have been authorized for a stage production. ''It will be a reminder to the old fans and an eye-opener to the young fans how beautiful the Beatles' music was and is,'' says Ono. ''Their music is something that should be heard now.''
In the fall of 2000, Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte visited Friar Park, George Harrison's estate in rural England. The two men shared a passion for Formula One racing and had met a few months earlier at a party Laliberte hosted for the Montreal Grand Prix. ''We sat in the garden,'' Laliberte recalls, ''and George said, 'Do you think there's anything that you could do with the Beatles' music?' I said that it would have to be a project that we did with the Beatles, and I didn't know if that would be possible. And he said, 'I do believe it's time now -- time for a project that would unify us creatively.'''
Six years later, Harrison's vision is reaching the stage. Love, officially opening on June 30th, will be presented in the round in a theater with 6,305 speakers, including a set built into every seat. But before this massive effort came together, Harrison had to persuade the other Beatles to approve such an unusual use of their music. Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr even flew to Vegas together to covertly watch two Cirque shows. When Harrison died in November 2001, the endeavor took on a new urgency. ''It got everybody to focus that this was the project he dreamed of doing,'' says Laliberte.
Love began in earnest almost three years ago when Beatles producer George Martin started assembling the music. ''They gave me carte blanche to produce a ninety-minute panorama of sound,'' he says, ''with the understanding that we could use any sound that I had recorded with the Beatles.'' Enlisting his son Giles (who has worked with Elvis Costello and INXS), Martin set out to re-imagine pop music's greatest catalog.
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''We were adamant that it not be a Mamma Mia!-type thing,'' says Giles. ''The last thing we wanted was 'The Beatles play Vegas.''' One early rule was that no one would portray the band onstage; as director Dominic Champagne says, his mission was to ''tell the Beatles' story without the Beatles.'' The Martins quickly created an example of the approach they had in mind: a mash-up that put the drums from ''Tomorrow Never Knows'' under the vocals from ''Within You Without You.'' ''It works jolly well,'' says George Martin, and when they played it for McCartney, Starr, Ono and Olivia Harrison, ''to our great surprise, everyone loved it.''
A version of ''Girl'' incorporates a drone from ''Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,'' a drum roll from ''Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite'' and a guitar figure from ''And I Love Her.'' An underwater treatment of ''Octopus's Garden'' starts with the strings from ''Good Night,'' mixes in the drums from ''Lovely Rita'' and then breaks into ''Polythene Pam'' for a middle section. (A Love soundtrack album is planned but not yet scheduled.)
Though there are no previously unreleased songs in the show, several tracks feature significant portions of new music. Director Champagne wanted to use one number to illustrate the creative process, so the Martins crafted a new version of ''Strawberry Fields Forever'' that starts with John Lennon's very first home recording of the song and builds through multiple takes up to the final, finished release. The acoustic demo of ''While My Guitar Gently Weeps'' from the Anthology series is fleshed out with a new string arrangement by Martin -- the only music composed especially for Love.
As it came time to put Love onstage, Champagne says that he strove for ''evocation more than duplication.'' The costumes and staging allude to Beatle iconography, including the 1964 landing at JFK airport, the Sgt. Pepper's album cover and the final rooftop concert. Elaborate projections add to the Cirque's characteristic visual explosion. After watching the full run-through last month, Ono said that ''it's simply exciting'' to see the show develop. ''It's getting better and better,'' she said.
Giles Martin acknowledges that some may view the alteration of Beatles songs as heresy, but he feels that if the new versions inspire people to really listen to these familiar songs again, Love has done its job. ''It's like the Sistine Chapel -- taking off layers and finding the brightness underneath,'' he says. ''Or like seeing a woman you love with a different haircut.''