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Cirque has come a long way since 1984, when Guy Laliberté and his Quebec City commune of street mimes and stilt walkers created a new kind of circus. Then, beginning in 1993, came Cirque's three Vegas shows--Mystère (bigger and better), O (just add water) and Zumanity (with a little sex). They revolutionized and co-opted Las Vegas entertainment. The city's upscale hotels now want a Cirque-style show rather than the older showgirl revue or visiting headliner. The town's other hot ticket, Celine Dion: A New Day, is utterly in the Cirque style (its director, Franco Dragone, helmed the first 10 Cirque shows), though on an even more gigantic scale. And when Steve Wynn, the entrepreneur who brought Cirque to the Strip, opens his new hotel in April, Dragone's La Rêve will be the permanent attraction.
Cirque's Vegas negotiations go like this: Laliberté presents the gargantuan budget for a new show, and the town's most powerful men say yes. The moguls aren't being profligate. The shows are as close to a sure thing as there is in Vegas. Mystère, after 11 years, still sells more than 90% of its tickets, "which is unseen in our [Vegas] industry," says Cirque's Daniel Lamarre. O sells out all its shows every week, Zumanity virtually all. A year after Zumanity opened at New York-- New York, the casino has improved its profitability 20%. It's anticipated that Kà will return $40 million in profit next year--$20 million to MGM and $20 million to Cirque.
And it's not just Vegas. The company's permanent shows (four in Sin City and another in Florida's Walt Disney World) and five traveling tent shows have a combined box-office gross of about $500 million a year. That's roughly half Broadway's total annual take.
Since Laliberté, 45, is the company's sole owner, he is a very rich man--but he is also a restless one. No one gets tired of the Cirque formula faster than Laliberté and his co-creators, Gilles Ste.-Croix and Guy Caron. For Kà, Caron roamed the world for six months, looking for specific circus acts that would fit into the larger scheme. The team loves to innovate and, with the hottest tickets in Vegas, they can afford to. Kà, at $165 million, is the most expensive theatrical extravaganza this side of a Donald Trump wedding.
Laliberté encouraged the largely outside creative team--including playwright and director Robert Lepage, stage designer Mark Fisher (who has created rock-concert environments for Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones and U2), choreographer Jacques Heim (leader of the Diavolo dance troupe) and puppet designer Michael Curry (Julie Taymor's The Lion King)--to unfurl ambitions that might make even the Cirque staff shiver.
What's new about Kà? Just about everything. To start, it's the first Cirque show with a plot. Lots of it--too much, really, to comprehend in a single viewing. In barest form, it's the story of twin princelings, a boy and a girl (played by sisters Sheri and Jennifer Haight), who are separated during an attack on the royal family and meet many outlandish creatures while they try to elude tattooed toughs led by the Counselor, a yellow-hooded Fu Manchu, and his sexy-punkster son. Kà means "duality" in Egyptian, and the plot eventually reconciles brother and sister, sea and sand, earth and sky.