While the Cirque brand may be mostly associated with colorful costumes and whimsical productions, Mad Apple is its own kind of “colorful” (translation: swearing and extremely adult humor). It’s also in a category of its own as far as Cirque shows go. The newest show in Cirque’s Las Vegas lineup, Mad Apple-which appropriately plays at the New York-New York Hotel & Casino-is a love letter to all things New York. If your vibe is New York City is the only real city on Earth: Mad Apple “O” plays Wednesdays through Sundays at 7:00 pm and 9:30 pm at the Bellagio. There is a reason that “O” is an enduring favorite that people return to see again and again. Set in a watery world, performers include high divers and synchronized swimmers as well as trapeze artists, aerialists, fire dancers, contortionists, and clowns. The result is an awe-inspiring production that could only ever be at the iconic Bellagio.įrom simple street performances to extravagant operas, “O” pays homage to the magic of the theater. Cirque is known for incorporating world music into its productions, and in “O,” the music is especially dramatic and grand. There’s also a ten-piece orchestra enclosed behind glass. The engineers even had to create a microclimate inside of the theater, the first of its kind in North America, to address the challenges presented by having a 1.5-million-gallon pool in a sealed, air-conditioned enclosure. Every single production requires hundreds of people in order to run, with almost twice as many stage technicians (150) as performers (85).
There is not a single detail of “O” that isn’t the result of mechanical wizardry. The theater itself, with a soaring, 12-story rounded ceiling illuminated in shades of blue meant to evoke stained glass, is adorned in rich jewel tones draped in gold, with the intention of recalling opulent European opera houses. From the minute you walk into the theater-hell, the minute you walk into the lobby of the theater, which doubles as a gallery for the bronze sculptures of Richard MacDonald depicting the taut bodies of dancers and acrobats in motion (that cost tens of thousands of dollars)-you just know that it is going to be a stunningly beautiful show. Kà plays Saturdays through Wednesdays at 7:00 pm and 9:30 pm at the MGM Grand (dark Thursdays and Fridays). If you only see one Cirque show in your life, make it Kà. Costumes include hand-painted silks and there’s also a fireworks-shooting Catherine Wheel. It blends choreography and theatrical elements from all over the world, including kung fu, Brazilian Capoeira, and Chinese opera. This technical production was the most expensive theatrical production in history when it first opened in 2005. For example, the famous “Wheel of Death”-a human-sized hamster wheel that features a performer running, jumping rope, leaping, somersaulting, and doing other objectively dangerous things while the wheel spins on a rotating arm-is a double wheel in the front with a triple wheel behind it with two performers doing death-defying tricks on them simultaneously. Kà features all the same kind of jaw-dropping acrobatics and aerial feats you expect from a Las Vegas Cirque show with some (extremely dangerous) showstoppers you won’t see anywhere else. It’s a coming-of-age story, a love story, and a hero’s journey story, but what you, the eager audience member, really need to know about this show is that it is basically a sumptuous martial arts epic come to life, and it is truly breathtaking. Here, the story is about two Imperial twins, a brother and sister, who are separated during an attack on the Royal Court and must forge their own paths of self-discovery before reuniting to defeat the attackers. Kà is the only Cirque show in Vegas with a cohesive narrative, which certainly sets it apart from the other productions that are tied together by a loose theme but aren’t really telling a story. If your vibe is MCU meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with a splash of Avatar : Kà
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