Tonight Cirque De Soleil's "Viva Elvis" show premiered in Las Vegas with a celebrity packed and invitation only opening gala at the Viva ELVIS Theater inside the Aria Resort and Casino. which was opened for the general public tonight. The Canadian Cirque du Soleil brought The King back to Vegas with "Viva Elvis".
The first reviews:
“Cirque Du Soleil's "Viva Elvis" outfabs Beatles. With the production's successfully bold musical choices and its sheer size and spectacle, the new Aria Resort & Casino can rest easy that folks from all over will seek an audience with the King.”
- Erik Pedersen, Hollywood Reporter / abcnews.com
“They've concocted an experience that's both symphonic and in every way fantastic.”
- Richard Corliss, TIME MAGAZINE
“This isn’t just a show, it’s a glorious celebration of the life of the king of rock ’n’ roll. Viva ELVIS is a new genre for Cirque: a splashy, feel-good musical with circus acts based on the golden oldies recorded by a single, iconic singer.”
- Pat Donnelly, Montreal Gazette
“It delivers exactly what many — most, probably — want from a Vegas show. Which would be vivid image after eye-sizzling sensation.”
- Joe Brown, Las Vegas Sun
“Elvis is back in Las Vegas and it looks like his show will run forever.”
- Ellen Sterling, BroadwayWorld.com
With a delay of one week the book "In A minesota Minute" has been released by the Memphis Recording Service label. The 9 x 11 inch hardback book contains 100 pages in full color gloss print, featuring the photographic works of Tim Healy in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the Elvis Presley show on October 17, 1976. "As the Minneapolis Tribune reported at the time, “Elvis is in as good shape as ever and, of course, as a performer on stage, singing or just fooling around, he has more charisma than a dozen other top performers combined. Will Elvis endure? Judging by the screams of the audience he's in no trouble.”
Cirque du Soleil triumphs with Viva Elvis - a glorious celebration of the King!: Art, architecture, and Elvis.
Those are the three key elements, beyond gaming, which are meant to draw a whole new demographic to the just-opened $8.5-billion CityCenter urban development in Las Vegas – a project that is often described as the biggest gamble ever made in Sin City.
The Cirque du Soleil’s Viva ELVIS has had more pressure on it to succeed than any of the six previous permanent Cirque shows in Las Vegas. And early reports, based on a premature unveiling of the work in December, were not favourable.
But when the show finally opened at the Aria resort in CityCenter this week, all doubts were swept away.
Judging from what this reviewer saw at Thursday’s preview (the VIP gala was Friday night), Viva ELVIS could soon become the top-selling show in Las Vegas.
This isn’t just a show, it’s a glorious celebration of the life of the king of rock ’n’ roll. Viva ELVIS is a new genre for Cirque: a splashy, feel-good musical with circus acts based on the golden oldies recorded by a single, iconic singer. It’s nearest comparable would be the Cirque’s Beatles show, LOVE, playing down the street at the Mirage.
Viva ELVIS, however, has a stronger narrative, even though the book is elliptical, assuming that everyone knows the basics of Presley’s life story. An actor (Garrett Eugene Case, Jr.) portraying Colonel Tom Parker fills in biographical details, occasionally, between songs. Musical director Erich Van Tourneau’s approach is argumentative as well as reverential, with sampling, medleys and mash-ups touching on over 40 songs, while about 20 of them get full-blown numbers.
Viva ELVIS begins, like most Cirque shows, with interactive clowns. Only this time, they’re swooning female Elvis fans, clutching their albums, worrying about their hair. Lights flash as they manage to scramble up on to the stage and tear down the gold-disc imprinted curtain, revealing the man himself on screen within a giant juke box high above centre stage. A busy dance scene unfolds below. Out comes the pink Cadillac, then the giant blue suede shoe, which matches the song Elvis is singing.
So much is going on (including fireworks), and Elvis is so magnetic, it’s a question of where to look. Up or down? Clearly, one of director Vince Paterson’s biggest challenges was to steal eyes away from the film clips in order to share the focus with the show’s 76 dancers, musicians and acrobats. Aerial acts and large sets (designed by Mark Fisher) that allow performers to work on several levels at once (the Jailhouse Rock prison is almost four storeys high) even the odds. And he has thrown the show’s eight on-stage musicians (a ninth works unseen) right into the action, as characters. They rock, in every sense of the word.
After the upbeat, dance-happy Don’t be Cruel, The Colonel shifts to pensive, talking about Elvis’s twin brother Jesse Garon, who died at birth. This leads into the heart-wrenching One Night With You, enhanced by a stunning aerial act performed by two acrobats on a giant guitar suspended against a backdrop of stars. The song is sung by a female vocalist (one of four) with Elvis’s voice taking over from time to time, a technique used throughout the show.
From here, the stage is shaken up by All Shook Up and an uplifting Gospel music segment that deserves a great big amen. Every facet of Presley’s musical curiosity is explored. Sometimes the film footage says it all. Tears well up as we see Presley signing up for the army and waving good-bye to the folks. As a singer offers up Love Me Tender, Elvis-in-uniform seems to respond with that old flirtatious smile. The marching boot camp number to the tune of Return to Sender is another dance/acrobatic highlight – with a hip-hop edge. All against the backdrop of a giant American flag with underwear hanging in for stars and stripes.
From army we go to spaghetti western, with giant statues of cowboy Elvis overlooking a campfire scene featuring gun-twirling and impressive lasso tricks. The medley here includes Blue Moon of Kentucky and Baby What You Want Me To Do.
We are reminded that Elvis was once a hunk of burning movie love by a parade of kiss clips. And the hot, hot bossa nova number turns to circus with a classic stacking-chairs number that culminates in a single handstand on a champagne bottle. A definite “Wow!” that cleverly brings live action up to Elvis-on-screen level. From here on in the show fast-forwards from one eye-popping number to another. King Creole goes reggae and Jailhouse Rock becomes a jailbreak riot that includes upside-down acrobatics and a dash of Keystone cops.
Erotic pole-dancing takes on a circus twist with Now or Never. And if there was a dry eye in the house during the Elvis and Priscilla wedding number, Can’t Help Falling in Love, it certainly wasn’t mine. The sweeping veil, the towering cake, and the ballet/roller skate dance add up to pure romance.
True, heartbreak follows with Love Me/Don’t as two pairs of acrobats fly high within two golden rings, leaving the lonely bride on top of the cake.
The pace picks up again with a Viva Las Vegas number that brings on faux Folies Bergère girls in sparkles, paired with male dancers in Elvis jumpsuits. Costume designer Stefano Canullli has gone wild here. A Suspicious Minds pas de deux hits a poignant note before being taken over by yet another show-stopping dance number featuring the jumpsuit guys, now dripping with fringe.
What, no Hound Dog? It has been saved for the rousing finale – which arrives far too soon. Ninety minutes is not enough. Once again, Elvis leaves us wanting more. And the Cirque has once again synthesized multiple art forms into a wondrously distinct creation.
Leaving the Elvis Theatre, the magnificent public displays of modern art within the airy architecture of the Aria and the rest of CityCenter suddenly make sense – as an ornate American jewel case for the heart and soul of the King.
Viva ELVIS continues indefinitely at the Aria Resort in Las Vegas. Visit www.cirquedusoleil.com.
(Review by Pat Donnelly, Montreal Gazette).
'Viva Elvis' -- Cirque du Soleil brings the King back to Vegas
Midway into Cirque du Soleil’s latest eye-popping Vegas production, “Viva Elvis,” there’s a segment saluting Elvis Presley’s love affair with Hollywood. It’s an upbeat, thigh-slapping ersatz western number in which one of the troupe’s dancers, outfitted as a movie cowboy, spins a lasso that keeps expanding until it seems to take in half the stage at the Aria Resort & Casino, where the show had its glitzy premiere Friday.
Impressive as that was to behold, it underscored how the Canadian company can’t get a rope around the mythic figure that is the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. All the signature Cirque elements are here: breathtaking acrobatics, dazzlingly inventive sets, joyfully inspired costumes and imaginatively reimagined music -- the bulk of it derived from Presley’s recordings.
But Cirque’s creative team appears to have set a standard for itself, and others, with the Beatles-driven “Love” show just down the street, which is not easily equaled, much less surpassed. That venture not only taps the musical spirit, but also reaches to the magical soul of the Fab Four, something that “Viva Elvis” aspires to only fleetingly in paying homage to pop music’s other titanic figure.
“Love” brought the Beatles to Las Vegas without a hint of schlock, a mission apparently impossible with Elvis given that his association with Sin City virtually defined the contemporary notion of pop-culture kitsch.
Cirque might have attempted to ignore that aspect of his career, but instead embraces it, and often in witty, mostly affectionate ways in a production for which tickets run $99 to $175. Ultimately, however, “Viva Elvis” is skewed more toward fans who are captivated by the cultural excess of Graceland than those most drawn to the startling power of his best music.
The show unfolds roughly chronologically, and incorporates lessons learned from “Love” in the lively de- and reconstructions of nearly three dozen of his studio recordings. Presley’s vocals are often detached from the original instrumental backing and paired with a live band that belts behind his voice with considerable gusto.
Cirque’s smart move from the outset was bypassing the use of any male singers for live renditions of his songs: Several numbers that are rendered anew are sung by female cast members, occasionally in duet with the King’s own disembodied voice.
But “Viva Elvis” doesn’t spend a lot of time trying explore the mystery of Elvis. It prefers to celebrate the public figure, and does so with great affection if not always with meticulous attention to historical accuracy or cultural credibility.
The show’s use of the character of Col. Tom Parker as narrator paints him as a sympathetic father figure -- “With Elvis,” he announces fondly, “every day was an adventure!” -- overlooking the self-enriching career and life direction the onetime carny gave his most famous client. “Elvis put Las Vegas on the map!” the Parker character intones without a hint of irony or even self-serving bluster, a statement that fans of Frank Sinatra might take issue with.
It also gives equal weight, and value, to his fallow Hollywood years as to his creatively explosive ‘50s period when he truly left the world all shook up.
One of the few times the show taps the pathos and tragedy of Presley’s life story, part of what makes that story so emotionally rich, is in the delivery of “One Night.” Instead of the ribald R&B number that Elvis transformed from “One Night of Sin” into “One Night With You,” it’s rendered here as a disarmingly graceful ballad, sung by a woman in contemporary tank top and jeans as she watches two men athletically working their way around a gigantic guitar-shaped metal framework suspended from above.
The men are dressed identically in the standard-issue teenage boy uniform of the ‘50s: white T-shirts, cuffed blue jeans and black Oxford shoes, representing Elvis Aaron and his twin, Jesse Garon, who died at birth. At the end of the number, while Elvis scales the neck of the guitar climbing toward the heaven-bound headstock, Jesse drops from one of the bottom rungs into a pit below, one hint at the personal loss that haunted him throughout his life.
There’s also a gorgeous and moving aerial pas de deux in which two troupe members float effortlessly through the air to accompany the weightless sound of Elvis' vocal on “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”
Among the other individual set pieces, “Got a Lot O’ Livin’ to Do” takes an audio clip in which Presley expresses his youthful passion for comic books as the foundation for a fanciful trampoline workout for acrobats fitted in various superhero-inspired costumes. “Bossa Nova Baby” incorporates a nerve-testing chair-balancing act full of characters in garish ‘60s hipster duds.
The two most striking numbers are the military-based treatment of “Return to Sender” that follows film footage of Presley’s 1958 swearing-in as a U.S. Army private, and an electrifying reinvention of the iconic “Jailhouse Rock” movie production number.
The show goes on to reference his fairytale wedding to Priscilla Beaulieu, as well as their tempestuous life together -- minus any allusions to the birth of Lisa Marie. It offers remarkably little acknowledgment of the career-rejuvenating 1968 NBC-TV comeback special, but not surprisingly concludes with an extended tribute to the years at the end of his life spent entertaining habitués of Vegas, a segment replete with showgirls in fancy headdresses and close to four dozen cast members, male and female, wearing multihued jumpsuits, plastic Elvis hairdos and sideburns for a valedictory Vegas-ized romp through “Hound Dog.” Happily, “Viva Elvis” stops short of any “Fat Elvis” gags.
Elvis Presley became the single most influential pop musician of the rock era by unleashing an innate genre- and color-blind talent that let him transcend his dirt-poor origins and achieve a previously unimaginable level of worldwide success, a story that still resonates powerfully because of the way that success fueled the excess that ultimately led to his downfall.
Cirque du Soleil clearly loves Elvis tender, but in the end "Viva Elvis" never lets him step off the mystery train.
-- Randy Lewis in Las Vegas
Bob Sillerman Comments On 'Viva Elvis' Premiere
Robert F.X. Sillerman, Chairman and CEO of CKX, Inc., said he was thrilled with the premiere. "When we first considered the idea of a production to capture the true essence of Elvis, we knew it had to be a show conceived and performed by the creative geniuses of Cirque du Soleil," Mr. Sillerman said. "Given that we were working with Cirque du Soleil, which has such an extraordinary track record, and an icon of the magnitude of Elvis, I was concerned that I had set my expectations too high. But from what I saw Friday and from the reactions of those who attended the premiere, including the critics, I am amazed to say that my hopes for the show have been exceeded."
Mr. Sillerman continued, "As the reviews have said, Viva ELVIS is a show the devoted Elvis fan will love, but it reaches beyond that. It will be thoroughly enjoyed by the casual Elvis fan, by the fans of music from Elvis's era and by anyone who ever listened to rock and roll. It is also a show that will be loved by fans of Cirque du Soleil, as it takes their talents to an entire new level."
Vegas' new 'Viva ELVIS' falls flat
Cirque du Soleil's tribute doesn't tap into the essence of the King of Rock 'n' Roll
When Cirque du Soleil premiered the Beatles-based “LOVE,” in 2006 at the Mirage Resort, the barre of excellence was set anew for this Montreal-based entertainment behemoth in terms of artistry, technology and shear pop culture magnitude. In that 90-minute spectacular production, the music of the Beatles was completely re-imagined, while cleverly edited “Beatles dialogue” was as haunting as it was endearing. It was a rediscovery of the very essence of the Beatles’ music.
Cirque announced soon afterward that its next subject for a Las Vegas mega-production would be Elvis Presley, which seemed a logical (if not more daunting) progression. After all, Elvis was Las Vegas' adopted native son, who spent a good chunk of his later life as the city’s top showroom draw, even if the pioneering rock-n-roll singer was now dressed up as a jumpsuited superhero, cape and all. So with the full cooperation of CKX Inc., (the company that controls the Presley estate), Elvis Presley Enterprises, access to every master recording Presley ever put down on tape, as well as all of his films and television appearances, home movies, and input from Priscilla Presley herself, how could Cirque miss?
But miss it has, and after experiencing the 90-minute “Viva ELVIS” gala premiere Friday night at the plush Elvis Presley Theatre inside the Aria Hotel at CityCenter, the reason becomes clear: Somewhere along the creative road, the production lost sight of the essence of Elvis Presley. (Trust me, it won’t be found in a group of rollerskating “bridegrooms” in one of the silliest giant wedding cake sendups this side of Busby Berkeley.)
Part Cirque, part rock concert, the production — written, directed and co-choreographed by Vincent Patterson — is eye-candy to the max, a color-rich explosion of Andy Warhol-meets-Bob Mackie-meets- “The Folies Bergere.” With its cast of 28 acrobats, 30 vibrant dancers (this show is almost entirely driven by dance), four female vocalists (the only male voice in the production is that of Presley himself) and a scorching nine-piece band that steals the show, “Viva ELVIS” is not the story of Elvis’ life, but a celebration of his legacy, the show’s program informs. To that end, glorious montages of home movies, vintage news reel footage and clips from Presley’s feature films provide the video backdrop to the action way, way below on one of the largest proscenium stages ever constructed.
Despite all that and more, Cirque has not quite figured out what it wants to do with Presley. Was he the King of Rock and Roll, or the king of kitsch? Do we really need pole dancers to sexy-up “It’s Now or Never” (which has incidentally been re-mixed in a minor key)? And when it comes to hearing Elvis sing, the show too often splits that duty between his vocals stripped from those master tapes and the aforementioned very capable female singers who tackle the Presley songbook in contemporary solo efforts or in funky “duets” with the King. A weakly written narrative delivered by an actor portraying Presley’s lifelong manager Colonel Tom Parker as a jolly old fella is just too much to forgive.
There are moments when the show does find its way: A brassy, big-band sendup of “Don’t Be Cruel” is a marvelous take on the classic. “All Shook Up” is reborn as a rousing spiritual in tribute to Presley’s Tupelo, Miss., roots. A gorgeous aerial trapeze pas de deux plays against Presley’s gentle vocals on “Are You Lonesome Tonight.” “One Night With You,” unfolds as a dramatic visualization of Elvis and his twin brother Jesse Garon (who died at birth) in which two male acrobats (dressed identically in 1950’s-style white T-shirts and jeans) navigate a massive skeletal guitar suspended high overhead. One climbs the guitar’s neck to the stars; the other tumbles into the abyss below. It is the evening’s emotional high point.
In the end, what’s missing in all of Cirque’s re-Elvising of Elvis is the heart and soul of the boy who would be king. Presley delivered rock and roll, blues, gospel and pop, with an incomparable dose of soul always at their core. Presley’s ability to cross all musical genre (and color) lines with the greatest of ease was his forte, from his earliest recordings, to his incomparable ’68 “Comeback Special” (shamefully missing from the production, since that television special paved the way for Elvis’ return to the Las Vegas stage) to those jumpsuited ’70s shows at the International Hotel that were the hottest ticket in town.
If you know little about the life of Elvis Presley or his music, “Viva ELVIS” will do little to enlighten you, though it will entertain you. But you will walk out of the theater knowing nothing of the deep faith Presley brought to “How Great Thou Art,” or the sexiness he brought to “Jailhouse Rock,” or the spirited rockabilly he brought to “Mystery Train.” It’s those musical qualities and abilities that made Presley the artist he was, and ultimately the pop culture icon he became. It’s those qualities that will forever be his true legacy. Now that’s something to celebrate.
Miriam Dinunzio / Chicago Sun Times