We’ve featured a number of his posts here at Fascination – Robin Leach and he’s spent the past decade giving readers of his column over at the Las Vegas Sun the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premiere platinum playround. And in this entry he gives us an inside peek at the new music and amazing new acrobatic acts amongst the subtle yet major changes to be unveilved this Friday at the reimagined “Zarkana” at Aria in MGM’s CityCenter.
“Zarkana” closed at the end of December to take advantage of the preplanned vacation for cast and crew in January, with the scheduled opening Friday. The spectacle about an abandoned magic theater that comes back to life returns with four guides rather than the individual magic character of Zark, while lead singer Cassiopee’s role has been expanded. At the time, Cirque commented, “A historic aspect of our artistic philosophy is to constantly renew and refresh productions. On its return in February, guests will find an invigorated ‘Zarkana’ with many of the same features, but with new enhancements, making it even more exciting and vibrant.” An incredible acrobatic act with British twins Kevin and Andrew Atherton is expected to be one of the incredible new highlights. The storytelling will be enhanced by new and expanded sand-painting art that has dazzled audiences since the premiere.
He also talked candidly with Diane Quinn, Cirque’s vice president of show quality and integrity, about the changes and the new-look ZARKANA. Some highlights…
“Zarkana” was received very warmly, but you went ahead with your normal tweaking and improvements?
I do think that different audiences are looking for different kinds of experiences. When we talked with our Las Vegas audiences after we had opened for a few months, we realized that they wanted a different kind of feel-good vibe: a little bit lighter, a little bit more upbeat and maybe even a little more accessible than how the show had been designed for New York and overseas audiences.
You had that Cirque-invented language, which I loved but worried whether people would really follow the story. Sometimes you have to repeat the same lines differently to audiences here to make sure they fully understand the plot.
That’s a really interesting comment. Initially, we had done the show when we started in 2011 in New York in English, and then we realized that the show was going to be traveling to the international markets of Madrid and Moscow. We debated over this for a while and changed to the invented language. It worked well overseas, so we just brought that same language right to Las Vegas.
It was challenging for some people wondering if it was Italian or Spanish, so ultimately we made a change there, too. We continue singing in the invented language, but now there’s much less language going on in the show. For example, the clowns use some English and some Cirque talk.
Our amazing composer Nick Littlemore, who takes his inspirations from his compositions for U2 and Coldplay, wanted to give the audience a little time to catch their breath between the spectacular acts. Originally, we didn’t have a lot of that. The theater is such a beautiful room, you need the music to wash over you, and that reimagined phase has been really important. Nick has rewritten more than half of the music, with a lot re-orchestrated and rearranged. The music is such an important storyline for all our shows, and this now really makes a bigger emphasis of what you see onstage.
So that’s a 50-percent-plus change in the music. Let’s talk about the individual acts, and let’s start with these two characters with the aerial strap act.
Amazing act! They are English twins — Kevin and Andrew Atherton — two of the nicest guys. It was really important that we could bring them to Las Vegas from our touring show “Varekai” and then “Iris” in L.A. They add a more emotional interaction with the audience. It’s amazing when they go over the audience. They’re synchronized. You feel you are watching one person.
They know each other so intimately that they know where the other will be without even having to look. When you watch them, you immediately see they use their twin senses. They don’t even turn their head, yet they can envelop each other. It truly takes your breath away.
So we have new music and new acrobatics, and I’ve heard that it will be more comedic without the need of Zark.
That’s the biggest thing. We decided to make the show more comedic. We made a very tough decision and removed Zark so that the audience can now really see the acrobatic numbers. We haven’t taken any numbers out; we’ve actually added to them. Now you will see nonstop acrobatics with the new rock music and visuals and set design making it one of the most gorgeous shows we’ve ever done. The sets haven’t changed, but it now really gets to be highlighted by these nonstop acrobatics. Brighter, lighter and faster paced.
“Zarkana” was derived from the words “bizarre” and “arcane,” so Zark didn’t come from the show title. Who now threads the storyline?
We actually use four characters — the two main clowns, the amazing female singer who is now prominently highlighted as we really focus on her playing several different roles and characters, and the wonderful sand artist. She’s captivated our audiences. We haven’t expanded her role per se, but it’s now really tailored to Las Vegas, so she’s been incorporated into the changes.
Does the cast love the new look, feel and sound of the show?
Yeah, it’s great. They worked incredibly hard, the technicians. And now all of those amazing movers, that’s what we call the characters in white, are more of the focus, which is fantastic. You get to see them and watch how they’ve evolved their individual characters. That for me has been a treat, as well.
Audiences are an incredibly diverse thing. You can have someone who loves the show, and you can have others who don’t. When we really started looking at our audience in Las Vegas, we thought that the best thing to do for them was to make some changes.
We’ve made the right decisions; we like what we’re seeing so far. It’s subtle and soft. There will be new artwork and new visuals coming in the next month, so it will look and feel different. From a marketing viewpoint, it will reflect a new look. For the show itself, we are now highlighting all the original acts, except we’re adding one. It’s nonstop acrobatics more than anything else. We have the same great female singer and band, same cast, so it’s “Zarkana” amped up.
There’s more to read over at The Las Vegas Sun!
LINK /// < http://goo.gl/f5xKUz >
{ SOURCE: Las Vegas Sun | http://goo.gl/f5xKUz }
