COVER STORY
Named for the 1932 Picasso painting owned by Steve Wynn, “Le Reve,” meaning The Dream, opened at Wynn Las Vegas in April 2005. What was to be an artistic celebration was more a nightmare. Immediately changes began that are still taking place today.
June 2006 brought the most drastic change: Steve Wynn bought out show creator and former Cirque du Soleil creator Franco Dragone for a reported $16 million. “We wanted 100 percent of the show’s revenue,” Wynn said at the time, and Dragone’s schedule couldn’t accommodate the changes Wynn wanted, which included making it less Cirque-robotic and more dance-oriented.
With Wynn at the helm, “Le Reve” is now an artistic and visual masterpiece; spectacular in scope and shining brightly. The show is shorter, more condensed and performed with precision in every aspect. A storyline is developing around a female dreamer that will be expanded during the next few months that will include Michael Curry puppets.
And the atmosphere – the new lighting design and music – captivates you as you go on a voyage through reality and fantasy in water and in the air.
“We’ve seen a real evolution of the show since we opened,” says the show’s artistic director Brian Burke. “When we opened, it had a darker vision, and there wasn’t a story line involved; it was more a series of tableaux. The decision was made to center the show on a female dreamer and her dream man, and the journey that they go on throughout the dream.
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“Because we were doing the show in the round, we didn’t have all the answers on opening,” Burke says. “And it’s an aquatic show on top of that, so most of the technology had never been used before. We’re kind of the opposite of regular shows -- we don’t have a standard script with words. And you can’t rehearse a show like this in a studio and then take it into the theater, you have to do it on site. A lot of the changes happened in technical rehearsal without the cast, over a span of months and months. The cast is integrated at the end of the process when there’s about to be a change.”
“The audience is watching a living piece of art; a detailed journey of her dream,” adds Burke. “We knew there were problems when we first opened, but you can’t describe or fix them until you have an audience. You need that reaction. We always knew there would be changes. We didn’t figure they would be as drastic as they’ve been. But from the beginning everyone was on the same plain wanting it to work.”
“We also felt that some of the show could be more uplifting and energetic, Burke says. “And Steve and Franco decided that they wanted to have more elements of dance in the show, maybe some exciting ballroom dancing. It’s never been done with water, and it’s never been done with synchronized swimming.”
Enter Maksim Chmerkovskiy from “Dancing With the Stars,” who helped stage the tango and up-tempo paso doble sequences, danced in tight, soaking wet costumes.
Two spectacular curtain effects were recently added: During the overture, a 24-panel canopy curtain vanishes into the ceiling (it takes an hour to reset the curtain for the next show), and a Kabuki curtain reveals the “Spell” act. Both effects are over in moments, but they took more than a year of technical work and rehearsal before they were introduced.
“Franco doesn’t like anyone to think they’re sitting in a theater,” Burke notes. “If you remember that you’re sitting in a theater, we haven’t done our job. If we take you to a garden, to outer space, to a beautiful job, then we’ve done our job.”
Burke has been with “Le Reve” from the beginning, moving from Celine Dion’s “A New Day.”
“It was the same with Celine’s show,” he recalls. “You work on it; open it and then start making changes.”
Burke’s main job is to maintain the overall artistic integrity of the show in its entirety, so its lighting, its sound, its choreography, its story line, characters, the clowns, everything. So when he watches the show, he tries to take in what the overall experience that an audience member perceives and feel the energy, feel the pulse of the show, the emotion, and really go from there.
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“The other thing that’s very interesting about the show that you don’t realize is the performers are never onstage when the audience is responding to what they’re seeing,” he says. “They’re underwater or in the air. Think about that. So they don’t know what the audience is feeling.”
Burke isn’t sure how much longer he’ll stay with “Le Reve” as he wants to fulfill his passion of creating and directing shows.
“It’s amazing how much of the original cast is still with the show,” Burke says. “With more than 90 performers you would think there would be there a natural evolution, but not here. Everyone really enjoys being part of this show because there really is no star. So many individuals get featured moments.”
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“Le Reve” success is not only from the brilliant cast on stage, in the water and in the air, but the artistic team behind the scenes including: composer & musical director Benoit Jutras, lyricists Mark Goodwin, “Dancing with the Stars” choreographer Maksim Chmerkovskiy (the new Tango, Paso Doble and Piece Montee numbers), aerial conceptor Didier Antonie, and aquatic choreographer Dacha Nedorzova.
Also, production designer Michael Crete, costume designer Claude Renard, makeup designer Carmen Abues Miro and new lighting designers Jules Fisher & Peggy Eisenhauer.
“I think the water is the thing that is actually the most exhausting,” added Burke. “Everything they do, they have to swim to get there. You have to love it to be in this show. It’s extreme. It’s extreme under the water. It’s extreme above in the air and then you get on stage and you perform your number. So it’s like you get up to the grid, you change your costume, you fly in or you come in underwater, you’re scuba’d under...so there’s no normal entrance. No such thing.”
Burke has worked with various famous singers and has performed on Broadway in Elton John and Tim Rice’s “Aida” and appeared in national tours of “Fame -- The Musical” and “Victor/Victoria.” He includes “Tap Dogs,” “Inappropriate,” “A New Brain,” “Steel City” and the movie “Camp” among his credits.
Choreographer for the 2002 Winter Olympics Games, “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” Penn and Teller’s “Sin City” spectacular and more than 60 industrials worldwide, Burke trained at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City.
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