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New songs and mixes for Love
Posted by Roger Stormo
Monday, February 15, 2016
From the Las Vegas Beatles show "Love" by Cirque du Soleil.
As previously reported, Cirque du Soleil's production of The Beatles show "Love" is undergoing changes for the show's tenth anniversary. "Love" director Dominic Champagne talked to the Montreal Gazette about what's been done; what's new and what has been taken out.
The show has currently taken a three week break while being renewed, and the refreshed "Love" will première on February 25. There's not going to be a big opening, but the participants will continue to tinker with the production in the months to come, in preparation for an official 10th-anniversary red carpet première in July (postponed from the previous announcement of June) with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono attending.
Sound bites and video
There were sound bites of the Beatles in the original show; one of the big changes is that there will be more of them now, and much more video of the four band members. "They’ll be more present via imagery," said Champagne. "A year and a half ago, they gave us access to their entire audio-visual library, which was not the case in the very beginning."
Acrobatics
"Love" is one of the least acrobatic Cirque shows, but Champagne feels the time is right to add a couple of big acrobatic numbers.
Music
There will also be a few changes in the music. Giles Martin is also doing new remixes of the songs, taking into account changes in technology over the past decade. Champagne didn’t want to reveal too much, but did say that "Twist and Shout" has been added and "I Am the Walrus" dropped. "Twist and Shout" was in the initial plan for "Love", but the Beatles didn’t have the right to use it at the time because it’s not their original song. "It’s such a strong vocal performance from Lennon, and it’s the kind of song you’d hear at a 30-year-old’s wedding today," said Champagne. "We hope that the Cirque du Soleil dancers will relaunch the twist with the act."
Source: Montreal Gazette
montrealgazette.com
Cirque du Soleil refreshes Beatles show Love for 10th anniversary
BRENDAN KELLY, MONTREAL GAZETTE
Published on: February 14, 2016
LAS VEGAS — You don’t just go and change Love, the Cirque du Soleil’s Beatles show.
If you want to even tinker with the phenomenally popular production, which has been packing the theatre at the Mirage hotel/casino in Las Vegas since 2006, you need to go to the source. So if you’re making some big changes, you most definitely have to run them all by the Fab Two and the representatives of the two Beatles no longer with us.
In a recent interview on a terrasse just outside the backstage of the Mirage theatre on the Strip in Vegas, Love director Dominic Champagne was talking about the major work that is going in to revamp this hit show. Champagne, who created the concept for the show with Cirque co-founder Gilles Ste-Croix, has been talking with others from the original creation for two years, and the team is now in Vegas busy making these changes.
The show is on hiatus for three weeks, and the refreshed Love will première on Feb. 25. But it will be what those in the live entertainment biz call a “soft opening.” In other words, they won’t have a big opening, but rather will continue to tinker with it in the months to come, in preparation for an official 10th-anniversary première in July with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono, the widows of George Harrison and John Lennon.
Before Champagne could do anything, he needed to meet with what he calls “the Beatles family.”
“We had a long session here with Yoko and Olivia (in December), and I met with Paul in New York,” said Champagne. “Ringo is kind of … he’d come here and there. He’s Ringo. He’s less involved.
“They have to approve everything. When we created the show, the deal was, and still is, that the Beatles have the final word on the music and the Cirque has the final word on the show treatment. But we had to create a certain basis of trust, which now exists. I had to prove myself. I did partly through my relationship with George Martin and (his son) Giles Martin, because we were in Abbey Road studio exchanging musical ideas and direction ideas. To build what we called ‘a rock ’n’ roll poem.’ And once in a while we’d meet with Paul, Ringo, Yoko and Olivia to get their approval. The last thing I wanted was that they wouldn’t be satisfied with this show.”
Now the trust is there among all the partners. That’s in large part because Love is a big commercial and critical success. Most everyone agrees that Giles Martin’s inspired mash-ups of the Beatles classics are fab, and that the creative team did a bang-up job of realizing a unique Cirque show that’s a poetic chronicle of the band’s tale, from Second World War-era Liverpool through Beatlemania to the bittersweet end.
There were sound bites of the Beatles in the original show; one of the big changes is that there will be more of them now, and much more video of the four band members.
“They’ll be more present via imagery,” said Champagne. “A year and a half ago, they gave us access to their entire audio-visual library, which was not the case in the very beginning.”
Love is one of the least acrobatic Cirque shows, but Champagne feels the time is right to add a couple of big acrobatic numbers.
There will also be a few changes to the musical menu. Champagne didn’t want to reveal too much, but did say Twist and Shout has been added and, surprisingly, the psychedelic classic I Am the Walrus is being dropped. Twist and Shout was in the initial plan for Love, but the Beatles didn’t have the right to use it at the time because it’s not their original song.
“It’s such a strong vocal performance from Lennon, and it’s the kind of song you’d hear at a 30-year-old’s wedding today,” said Champagne. “We hope that the Cirque du Soleil dancers will relaunch the twist with the act.”
Giles Martin is also doing new remixes of the songs, taking into account changes in technology over the past decade.
But Champagne stresses that the core of the show remains the same and the message stays the same.
“There’s a lot of emotion in this show. There’s great intimacy. This is a great tribute to love. That’s what the Beatles gave to the world. (From) very sexual, primal behaviour in the early days — I Want to Hold Your Hand, She Loves You yeah yeah yeah — to something really more sophisticated at the end. It ends with ‘The love you take is equal to the love you make.’ And this we’ll keep.”
As we wound down our chat, Champagne reflected on something Lennon said before his death: he said he didn’t want to end up in a show in Vegas.
“And I was directing the show that he was somehow ending with in Vegas,” said Champagne. “I wanted this show to be a real piece of creation, and not a dull anthology type of show. I didn’t want to go ‘museum’ with the Beatles. If the Beatles were there, they’d go creative with us. So let’s be creative. And this is an opportunity to make it better. To follow what the man said, to take a sad song and make it better.”
And we’ll never know what Lennon would have thought of it, I said.
“Yeah, but we can have a little idea when Yoko and (his sons) Sean and Julian talk. They’ll never replace John’s opinion, but they were very happy with what the show expressed. I want to presume that Lennon would have been proud of that show, too.”
Projected images of the Beatles were seen during a preview of Love at the Mirage in Las Vegas in June 2006. The revamped show will include more sound bites and video of the band members, says director Dominic Champagne. ETHAN MILLER / GETTY IMAGES
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