Wynn Las Vegas closes ‘Le Rêve’ for good- Page 2

[RippedMan]

Posted: 12/31/21 at 1:57am

Any idea what they are doing now with this space? 

[IworyHoward]

Posted: 10/16/22 at 8:22pm

sas

[FANtomFollies]

Posted: 10/16/22 at 9:12pm

RippedMan said: "Any idea what they are doing now with this space?"

New show at the Wynn

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 10/16/22 at 9:23pm

Looks like the proper amount of insane Vegas spectacle to me. I’m sold!

[SouthernCakes]

Posted: 10/16/22 at 10:23pm

Water will be missed but looks very cool!

[Tag]

Posted: 10/16/22 at 10:23pm

Franco Dragone died last month, and weirdly it was not reported in the mainstream media.  Too bad this show wasn't still around to tribute him.

[inception]

Posted: 11/9/22 at 3:36pm

I copied a pasted the following review by user Vin J on TripAdvisor Las Vegas forum as it is too difficult to post a link to just one post there:

 

Awakening Will Leave You Wanting Less

Imagine a meal cooked with the finest ingredients in the world, in the most technologically-advanced kitchen available, and served on the most expensive china, but after one taste, you find the dish so bland, you don’t want to take another bite. If the show Awakening were a meal, that would be your experience.

The Wynn reportedly spent $120 million and engaged the top talent available in production design, choreography, special effects, puppetry and magic to create a production so dull and uninspiring it makes me sad. A huge amount of money was spent on a stage that is itself a giant video screen, which breaks apart into what seems like a dozen different pieces that move up and down on giant hydraulic pistons, topped off by a bevy of high-powered lasers, computerized lights, video screens and special effects. One gets the impression that the creators of Awakening thought that all of this great stagecraft was enough to make a great show, but Awakening is proof that state-of-the-art technology is not, by itself, entertaining. To keep with the meal analogy, a $5 bottle of wine served in a $1,500 crystal decanter is still a $5 bottle of wine.

Make no mistake—the theatrical technology in Awakening is awesome, and there is a single special effect in the show—created by magic designer Paul Keive—that is the most incredible special effect you’ll ever see on stage. I don’t want to tell you what it is, in case you end up seeing it, but it is a fantastic illusion that you’ve never seen before. Unfortunately, for as great as it is, it’s too little too late to save this meandering technical folly.

The show is based on an old trope of a story line about a battle between light and dark (good and evil) and a quest to collect the elements of air, water and earth. It’s a story you’ve seen and heard before, and its telling by Kelly Sue DeConnick, who is credited with writing the show, is so insipid and boring, not even narrations by Anthony Hopkins can make it interesting.

The story is told by a cast of 60 dancers, who try very hard but are so laden by bulky costumes, so upstaged by giant puppets, and so encumbered by the movement of the gyrating stage while pushing around large magic box illusions, that they aren’t given the ability to show off their considerable talent. It’s literally impossible for this poor cast to dance when dressed as a giant sea anemone (I’m not kidding) while riding a stage that moves like the tilt-a-whirl at the county fair. For about 30 seconds during the bows at the end of the show, several of the performers are given the opportunity to freestyle. It’s at this moment you’ll realize that the cast is incredibly talented, and at the same time you’ll wonder why the show’s producer’s decided to hide that talent under a heaping mass of technology and poor stage direction. It’s unfortunate, but the performers are treated as a mere afterthought in this overwrought theme park ride of a show. Rather than showcasing the talent and enhancing it with the tech, the producers of Awakening showcased the tech and made the cast its victim.

After an opening that featured an array of couture black-and-white costumes, two giant baby-faced stilt walkers and the production of “Darkness”—one of the lead performers—in a large glass cabinet, I was at least interested in seeing what would come next. And then it came. The second act of the show takes place “under the sea”, and can only be described as something you might see on a second-rate cruise ship that is trying to put on a Disney production without paying for the rights. It features a mermaid singing into a conch shell, performers costumed as all manner of sea life, jellyfish puppets right out of Cirque du Soleil’s “Love”, and another lead—“Light”—playing a role that is part carnival barker, part Aquaman and part pimp. During this act, the cast performs a couple of off-the-shelf magic illusions, and you can almost hear them thinking “I got hired as a dancer, so why I am pushing around this giant box while dressed like seaweed?” The whole number looks like it came out of 1994 and leaves you feeling bad for the performers.

The only good thing to be found “under the sea” is a giant whale puppet that makes for a moment of real whimsy. It was created by Michael Curry, who is credited as one of the producers of the show and responsible for the puppets in Lion King and Le Reve. As a producer, I guess Curry was given the creative freedom to put as many puppets in the show as he wanted. A couple are good—like the whale and a 20 foot tall “Rock Man”—but the rest are either dated or just bad (like the rod puppets that open the show and the flying dragon flies that look like kites from the dollar store).

The rest of the numbers have better bones than “under-the-sea”, but they are poorly staged, lack any kind of focus, and for all of the technology, costumes and puppets, it frequently feels like nothing is happening. Except for that one spectacular illusion I mentioned earlier, we’ve seen it all before. One notable moment, which happens in the final act of the show, is a performance of a unique and magical form of baton twirling, where two illuminated batons seem to magically fly around one of the cast members. This moment is notable because it is truly magical, and it is one of the only moments where a performer is given center stage to showcase a unique talent. Awakening is in dire need of more moments like this—where talent is on display—and utterly fails for lack of them.

I have to blame this bland dud of a show on the chef—or in this case, director Baz Halpin. With the amount of money and access to talent available to Awakening, the failure of a show like this to be innovative, energetic and engaging—and to live up to the five-star, five-diamond status of the Wynn—has to fall at the feet of the director and the executive at the Wynn that said yes to these creative decisions before writing the very large checks needed to pull it off. Halpin’s job wasn’t easy. Integrating the myriad elements of a show the size of Awakening is a daunting task of balancing logistics, performance, storytelling and finesse, akin to landing a 747 on Las Vegas Boulevard with 60 people tap dancing on the wings. Yet there are some obvious misses in terms of directing. While the performance takes place in the round, it’s obvious that it was directed from a single vantage point, leaving 80% of the audience with less-than-perfect framing for the action on stage (if you are going to go, you’ll want to sit in section A or B). At a number of points in the show, the three lead performers are alone on stage, and I kept feeling like I wanted to throw them a life preserver because it felt like Halpin set them adrift without a sextant.

I’m sure the Wynn entrusted Halpin with Awakening because of his reputation for directing spectacles. Among those spectacles are a number of high-profile concert shows for celebrities like Taylor Swift and Pink, and halftime shows for major sporting events—and this is where the trouble may lie. When a celebrity performer or a sporting event is at the center of a production, the director’s job is to build around them to enhance and not obscure the celebrity or the event—and Halpin does that well. But Awakening doesn’t have a celebrity providing the focus and structure on which Halpin typically hangs his hat—and the talent of the 60 dancers that might have been a worthy surrogate for a celebrity was absolutely neglected (if you don’t believe me, read any of the articles and puff pieces about Awakening, in which the producers breathlessly go on about puppets, costumes, technology and effects, but fail to mention the performers in the show even once).

Going back to that meal analogy, Halpin is at his best where the celebrity provides the steak and Halpin’s job is to come up with a nice side of potatoes to finish off the meal. With Awakening, you pay for the whole meal—and it was Halpin’s job to cook it—but in the end and all you get is the potatoes.