A Show That Soars--and Swims

By RICHARD CORLISS

The cast of O, the beautifully buoyant Cirque du Soleil water extravaganza at the Bellagio, wore circus motley: urchin's togs, ballerina gowns, penguin suits and the odd clown nose. Last week's opening-night audience, though, was outfitted in formal evening wear--1,800 exponents of money and glamour. It was just the sort of crowd Steve Wynn would like to see at his new hotel every night. So would the other high-rolling master builders in this high-desert fantasyland. Like an aging chorine who learns a little French and buys a Chanel frock in hopes of attracting an upper-crust beau, Las Vegas is smarting itself up to snag ritzier visitors.

The name O plays on the French word for water (Cirque's founders are French Canadians) but also means to evoke the word of wonder that audiences so often express--Ohhhh!--as gorgeous bodies sail through the air or dive from a 60-ft. pedestal into the pool that occupies much of the huge stage. O could stand for the oasis of sophistication Cirque represents with this production and its sister show, Mystere, at Treasure Island, on the four-mile Strip in the desert.

Those who have seen Mystere or any of the five touring shows Cirque has presented since 1987 will know what to expect from O: the tumblers and trapeze acts, the contortionists and clowns, wrapped in dazzling, almost liturgical theater magic and underscored with seductive New Age melodies. They will know, and then, seeing O, they will be astonished. For Cirque has trumped itself again. Putting on a show in, above and under water has forced director Franco Dragone and the Cirque staff to create an intricate new technology that allows the pool floor not only to rise and descend but to "breathe"; water can seep through instantly to create a dry stage space. Virtually all the performers had to be scuba-certified, and all are dependent on complex mechanical cues, whose failure could mean injury or worse to the athlete-artistes.

Technology may define the show but does not dominate it; O swims and soars to its own uniquely beguiling rhythm. The individual acts summon innocent gasps from the crowd. How can one acrobat hang so gracefully from another when the two are attached only by their feet? How can one trapeze artist catch another when their apparatus, a ghostly pirate ship in midair, is rocking so vigorously? How does a little princess balance on her head while her trapeze bar revolves high over the pool? And that fellow reading a newspaper--doesn't he realize that his hat, shoes, pants and chair are all on fire? A person isn't supposed to be able to do such things, and few minds are free enough to conceive them. But Dragone is a poet whose language is the human body.

More than any other Cirque show, O incorporates these acts into its expansive design. A quartet of carousel horses canters through the air. Angels, hunchbacks, giant toucans materialize as cameo apparitions. Anything may navigate the pool: a bathtub, a giant inverted umbrella, a wayward iceberg, a shark fin that turns out to be the top of a crescent moon. At the end the hunchback plays a grand piano as the princess reclines on it--art, love and beauty in one heartbreaking image--and then, slowly, it dissolves into the water. Here and throughout, O achieves a goal of the highest art: to elevate its audience to a state of awe. Of ohhhh!

O could also stand for "owe": at $100 a ticket, this $90 million production is the priciest legal attraction in Vegas. But in a town that quickly tires of old sensations, the stage magicians from Montreal have created another enticement that will not go out of style. Cirque endures. O is forever.

--By Richard Corliss