| rev:text
| - This review was from the 7:00 showing on August 27, 2009.
It pains me to give this such a low score.
I remember growing up a Beatles fan, I appreciated the music and their contributions they made to the world. My father would sit me down as a kid and set up some old LP's and play it on his stereo system. He told me about their history and I grew an appreciation for their music and lyrics. As I walked in and got seated, we were seated in the middle of section 200, dead center stage. We were really happy and excited with the tickets. At first glance the stage venue is extremely impressive, it's massive and sits in a arena styled format. I got seated and got to enjoy listening to some of the house music of the Beatles work, and I also enjoyed seeing a few of the circus performers take to form of John, George, Paul and Ringo all dressed from their different eras. I especially liked the interactions that the butler with the silver teapot, made with the spectators while we waited for the show to start.
The show started out fine, but maybe about 20 minutes in, after the second or third song, all the dancers cleared the stage and some of the music resumed. For about 5 minutes we sat there in the dark waiting for something to happen. Nothing, we sat in the dark listening to Beatles music. A few minutes later the house reports that there will be a temporary break and it will resume momentarily. I'm not sure if one of the actors got hurt or if there was something wrong with the stage, but we sat there for 25 more minutes, in the dark listening to music. The users didn't make it any easier, they tried to discourage us from getting up, insisting that the show will resume shortly. They eventually got whatever they needed to be fixed, but with the show running behind schedule and in talking to a couple other people who have saw the review, have told me that they saw things that may have been cut out of our show, so they could catch up and make up time that they lost so they could be ready for the next show that was to come. I was not interested in shelling out a 130 bucks again to find out.
Despite the technical difficulties they had, there were some really glaring issues that I had that I couldn't over look. First of all, this was Cirque du Soleil, I was expecting so see more acrobatics and other circus feats, but compared to shows like Ka, Zumanity and O, they seemed to have skimped on this aspect. I understand they wanted to focus on the Beatles music, but, I know Beatles music, I would have rather wanted to see the interpretation that Cirque would have done with it.
The other issue I had was due to the stage, at times, even from our central position in section 200, there were times the layout of the stage was cut out to accommodate more seating, as a result you got little corners that were obscured from view. I found this flaw annoying especially, when some of the audience may have seen something really cool due to all the Ooohs and Ahhhs... and we couldn't see what happened. Or there were quite a few times that there were so many performers on stage, that it began to look like a giant mob on stage and it became very easy to lose track on what you were supposed to look at.
I think the thing that was probably most confusing was the lack luster story line, it felt as though they were trying to tell a story but failed to make it clear to the audience. It was extremely loose and it seemed the director decided it would be a good idea for the audience to fill in the blanks. It's not a good sign during our forced intermission that we heard 6 conversations around us, asking about what the story line was. If you want to be that abstract do what most ballets do and give us a freaking playbill with a background storyline. This issue was significantly apparent in the first 4 scenes of the show. There were also pretty of "what the hell" scenes as well, but I think that may have been due to the fact that they we trying to materialize the imagination of these four musicians when they were under LSD influences.
I know for a fact most people will go see this show, regardless of my experience and if you appreciate the music, you should. Just make sure you keep your expectations in check. I made the mistake of building it up in head, but if I look at it objectively, as a Cirque du Soleil, it isn't in my top three productions, it's not even in my top five, it's probably my one least favorite of the Cirques. I don't think I could shell 130 bucks on seeing the show again and see what I may have missed from another seating angle, instead I think I would rather go onto amazon.com and go ahead and buy the digitally remastered, Beatles Stereo Box Set... It costs about the same. I know I won't have any technical difficulties on my home stereo.
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