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Le Reve The Wynn, Las Vegas www.wynnlasvegas.com

Written by: Ricardo Barberini March 27, 2008

Recently I was invited by a dear friend to go to Las Vegas for a few days and enjoy the weather and view the scantily dressed young ladies.  My friend, also invited me to see a show at the Wynn Hotel.  We did not realize that each ticket cost $145.00 dollars. 

According to the guy at the Travelocity agency, the show was supposed to have been created by the producer of Cirque du Soleil “O” and was supposed to be far superior to the original.  At least that is what the sales person from Travelocity told us. 

The show opens up with a petite young girl and a tall bald man walking on stage and smooching each other before the man leaves.  The girl goes to her bed in the middle of a little pond.  Soon, she falls sleep and is sucked into the pool below by unknown forces.  This is the start of the dream!

Another tall bald man with a staff appears.  He is supposed to be a prophet or something.  At least he acts like a bald version of Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments. He has a retinue of four comics in white suites and black bow ties, a clown and bunch of other girls and bald boys who do formation and synchronized swimming. 

From above the stage we have a few men dropping into the water below and some more dancing follows. 

The bad guys, who enter next, are two different incarnations of the Devil.  There is a bald Satan who mostly spends his time in water and a dark, fully dressed one, with a pony tail and short black wings.  He never goes in the water but conducts his followers from along the periphery of the round pool. 

The disciples of Satan arrive next to do their repetitious dance one more time. We assumed they were the disciples of Satan since they had what looked like the letter S painted on top of their bald heads.

Then a bald guy with a lantern arrives as if searching for something.  We guessed the producer had heard about the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes who carried a lantern in daylight looking for the truth and an honest man.  Maybe, this was the producer’s abstract version of the story.  How clever of him!  Afterward, more dancing by bald men and small barefoot girls follows.  Later following some Gregorian chants, a few men with blue pajamas or actually long johns come in and try to seduce the sleeping girl who is now going from man to man.  Eventually, two of the men give up on the girl and perform an erotic dance, with each other, and disappear under the water to be followed by three girls in a giant ball arising from the middle of the lake who perform more acrobatic plays with each other in the air.  That act is finished with a crescendo of music. 

The sleeping girl who was supposedly dreaming all this time goes back to her bed and is raised up into the air to disappear into the giant black hole above the stage.  The clown, who is actually a good dancer, does some fancy dancing and soon all the other cast member join for the final bow.

Cirque du Soleil “O” this is NOT.  And, the lukewarm, but polite, reaction of the audience proved the point.  It was not definitely worth $145.00 each, not to mention the $9.00 for the Pellegrino water.

There was no acting involved in this production as this was an exercise in dancing and frolicking about. The special effects were nothing to write home about.

It always amazes us to see how the power of money and hard promotion can fool some newspaper critics to sing the praises of mediocre pieces of trash. 

Probably the best act in those series of unrelated activities was the girls with Candelabras emerging from the water and dancing around the circle in the middle of the pool.  That was somewhat original and the music was in synch.

Actually, the music was nice for most of the show and the girls were quite attractive. So, it was worth perhaps $45.00.  There is obviously a reason that Cirque du Soleil  “O” is booked four months in advance and the guys in Travelocity were so eager to push this show instead.  

We tried to review this objectively.  The show was really a series of unrelated performances with no real continuity.  Even pure fantasies like Alice in the Wonderland and the Sleeping Beauty have a common thread running through them.  The fact is that, except for the first act and the penultimate act when the girl goes back to sleep, you could scramble and change the order of other acts and nobody would notice any difference.  We think that it was rather disingenuous to present those disjointed dance numbers as a show.

Our ratings:

For Dancing:                          2 Stars           Good to Excellent    

For Acrobatic ability:            2 Stars            Average to Good

For Music Score:                  3 Stars            Very good

For story line:                        1 Star              Mediocre

For Acting:                             1 Star              Below average

Overall we give this show .  It is better than some other trash on the strip, but if you want Cirque du Soleil “O”, then book in advance and skip this one.