Track #1: “Awakening” @Wynn Las Vegas
60 cast members are ready to rescue you from mundane reality. (Image: Vegas 411)
Every long-running show in town needs the addition of new elements—a “refresh,” as they say—to stay in the news and keep folks coming back to fill the seats. The challenge is to seamlessly introduce new acts to the production without wrecking its original appeal.
The creative minds of “Awakening,” the marquee theater show that’s been playing at the Wynn Las Vegas since November 2022, have succeeded in bringing more tension and sizzle—via three new acrobatic acts—to the 80-minute family-friendly production. It all takes place in a 360-degree theater with a rotating stage. Here, art and technology are satisfyingly combined with hypnotic human feats.
Hard to top this balancing act. (Image: courtesy of Awakening)
I didn’t know I needed to see the shoulder ballet sequence with a ballerina en pointe atop her partner’s head. To my mind, it suggested that there’s beautiful symmetry in the world amidst the day-in, day-out chaos. I was also wowed by slackwire performer Tang Zhe’s daring movements on a tensionless wire suspended above the stage. And everyone was on the edge of their seats for the Olympics-worthy “Russian Bar” acrobats for their triple somersault.
Pleasure seekers looking for an adult-centric, thrilling show in Vegas can go see Spiegelworld’s fabulously bawdy “Absinthe” and “Atomic Saloon.” There’s also room in this town for a family-friendly-but-still-sophisticated spectacle like “Awakening” with its dazzling choreography performed by a perfectly chiseled cast, each with presumably 5% bodyfat.
And while the show’s story line—about “a reluctant heroine who travels through extraordinary realms to reunite Light and Darkness and restore balance to her world,” per the show’s notes—may not be as compelling for adults as it is for the young ones, it does tie together the show’s fantasy sequences, with two-time Academy Award-winner Anthony Hopkins delivering the recorded narrative.
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