LAS VEGAS "KA" has all the Cirque du Soleil
trimmings: a thumping New Age score, cross-cultural clowning,
seemingly death-defying acrobatics. But the real star of "KĄ,"
at the MGM Grand Hotel Casino in Las Vegas, is the theater itself.
This "Metropolis"-meets-"Blade Runner" showroom, custom built
for the production, features a byzantine network of brass spires,
planks and catwalks above and around the audience and a pair of
"performance platforms" that fly through the air, changing shape,
color and texture. The show's human performers are literally upstaged.
"Cirque does like it when human performance transcends all the
nonhuman elements in the show, but I can understand the person
who says the theater is as epic as the story being told," said
Lyn Heward, Cirque's president and chief operating officer.
The model that the set designer Mark Fisher had in mind was
the immersive experience of a film, and he cited "The Matrix"
as a chief influence. The main platform is mounted on a mammoth
mechanical arm that can thrust it forward and spin it 360 degrees
(for a scene in which it represents a boat), or prop it up vertically
so that a battlefield can suddenly be seen as if from above.
The show becomes a veritable entertainment factory, with the
twirling and shifting stage a vital part of the spectacle.
"KĄ" is merely the most expensive and involved of the new
custom-built theaters springing up in Las Vegas. Far from the
space constraints of Broadway, resorts there routinely build
lavish showrooms for specific productions. The soon-to-open
Wynn Las Vegas Hotel-Casino put $100 million into a theater
equipped with a 1.5 million-gallon pool for a new spectacle
by the former Cirque creator Franco Dragone. Next door, the
Venetian is spending $30 million to prepare for a Vegas-sized
version of "Phantom of the Opera." And all this comes after
Caesars Palace built the $95 million Colosseum for Celine Dion
in 2002.
"You can't do a lot of this in New York because there's just
no land left, and all those theaters are landmark-protected,"
said Michael Gill, whose theatrical management company is responsible
for bringing "Phantom" to Las Vegas next year, as well as "Hairspray"
at the Luxor this fall. "You can't knock them down, you can't
alter the integrity of the theater. And that's a problem for
the kind of spectacle that Vegas is known for."
A look at the "KĄ" theater, by the numbers:
COST $135 million
SEATS 1,950, each with its own speaker
STAGE DIMENSIONS 120 feet by 120 feet by
98 feet high (149 feet to lowest floor level below stage)
MAIN PLATFORM 25 by 50 by 6 feet; 80,000
pounds (350,000 including crane); moved by four 75-foot hydraulic
cylinders
SMALLER PLATFORM 30 by 30 feet; 75,000 to
100,000 pounds
FREE FALL 90 feet (maximum height from which
performers are dropped)
