A year ago this coming Saturday, Cirque du Soleil along with Criss Angel unveiled their collaborative effort – BELIEVE – to quite a number of disappointments. Joe Brown of the Las Vegas Sun was in the audience premiere night and gave the show a scathing negative review. Now it’s a year later and he’s decided to give the show its “annual checkup”. How did it do?
- Unbelievably, Angel’s “Believe” will hit the one-year mark on Saturday. After a blizzard of hype — $100 million investment! Ten-year contract! Criss + Holly 4Ever! — the show opened at the Luxor on Halloween night 2008 to a near-unanimous chorus of boos from reviewers, including yours truly.
I was curious about how Angel and Cirque du Soleil might have changed or improved their collaboration in the intervening year, so I bought tickets (including a second seat for just $25) for Wednesday’s 7 p.m. performance.
Mr. Angel, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.
“Believe” now seems a bizarre, stranded artifact of a moment when some people had too much money. The show has been streamlined a bit — no live musicians, fewer aerialists and dancers, less video wizardry — but it hasn’t been improved, only diminished. Not much has changed with the overall experience of “Believe”: I got it pretty much right the first time around.
Read more of Joe Brown’s re-review of BELIEVE here.
{ SOURCE: Las Vegas Sun }
