LAS VEGAS – The Beatles will soon join “Hairspray,” “Mamma Mia!” and Celine Dion on the fabled Las Vegas Strip.
Tickets went on sale Wednesday for “Love,” a theater collaboration that features the legendary music of the Fab Four and the acrobatic spectacle of Cirque du Soleil. The show premieres June 30 with an international cast of 60 performers at The Mirage hotel-casino.
It is the first major theatrical partnership for The Beatles’ record label, Apple Corps Ltd., which has carefully guarded the British band’s groundbreaking collection of songs for decades.
George Martin, The Beatles’ original producer, and his son, Giles Martin, have surveyed the entire archive of nearly 200 Beatles songs to assemble the musical score for the show.
“Love is really the strongest theme of what the Beatles used to create their songs,” creative director Gilles Ste-Croix said in an interview. “From their first song, their first success, it was about love, to the last song they recorded.”
The creators aren’t releasing a song list because the show will feature whole songs and song fragments, said Cirque spokeswoman Jennifer Dunne. “Fans will have fun trying to figure out which are partial songs,” she said. “We won’t give out the song list and we probably never will.”
Apple plans to release an album of the show’s score through EMI Music later this year.
The show will take place in a 2,013-seat theater in the round that took two years to build. In grand Cirque style, aerial acrobats, tumblers and dancers are to move through the set while high-definition video images will be projected onto 100-foot-tall screens.
Roller skating and BMX bikes will appear while Beatles montages play through more than 6,000 sources of sound, including three speakers on every seat, Ste-Croix said.
“We really want people to feel like they’re in the studio with The Beatles,” he said.
For The Mirage, the show replaces the legendary Siegfried &Roy act that closed after illusionist Roy Horn was nearly killed Oct. 3, 2003, by one of his tigers.
“Love” is the fifth production on the Strip by Cirque du Soleil – French for circus of the sun. The troupes of international performers combine classic circus performances, lighting effects and a surreal atmosphere with dance, humor and audience participation.
Meanwhile, “Mamma Mia!” the campy, crowd-pleasing musical inspired by ABBA disco-pop hits, is now heading for the big screen, the trade paper Variety reported Wednesday.
Tom Hanks’ production company, Playtone, the paper reported, has inked a deal with Littlestar Services Limited, the company run by the hit show’s producer, Judy Craymer, and ABBA songwriters Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus. Discussions are now being held with Universal Pictures to finance and distribute the film.
The movie is expected to be released in late 2007, Variety said.
The musical – which includes 22 ABBA classics like “Dancing Queen,” “Take a Chance on Me” and, of course, “Mamma Mia” – has earned $1.6 billion worldwide since its London opening in 1999.
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