If you’ve not seen Zarkana, you’re not really missing out. While it’s not clear if it is really the worst rated show in Cirque Du Soleil history, many locals and visitors have commented that they think it probably is. The show, only three years later with only 1,600+ performances on the strip will be closing on April 3oth with very few people missing it.
Yelp agrees that this is the worst rated Cirque Show ever, with many Yelpers giving it less than stellar reviews:
Let me start off by saying this was one of the worst Cirque du Soleil shows I have seen, even the ones that set up tent in cities around the nation are better.
However we are being generous to give this 1 star. Don’t waste your money on this boring, mindless theatrical disaster. We have seen Cirque shows going back to the beginning when you sat on wooden benches in tents and have enjoyed everyone with the exception of this production
I saw the show in Vegas tonight. I almost puked. The clown time was too much and they were not even funny. The number of acrobatic shows were pretty much 4 scattered around the clown show. The only impressive one was the girl juggling the balls, The trapeze show was short and the guys couldn’t even do the simplest turns and one fell off. What an amateur show for 150 bucks. Never again.
Robin Leach of Lifestyle Fame isn’t happy about it closing, since he seems to be one of the few actual fans of the show in Las Vegas:
It’s an embarrassing end to a Cirque spectacular, as MGM Resorts execs have ruled that revenue from expanded meeting and convention space would be greater than the magical artistic endeavor. So for the second time since “Mystere” at Treasure Island established Cirque on the Strip, one of its shows ends.
It’s a tragedy because although “Zarkana” started here as a confused production with its own Cirque language about a magician who loses his mojo, it later found its perfect footing. When I saw it a few weeks ago in preparation for its finale, the show was in its best shape ever and with a full theater.
LVRJ Writer Mike Weatherford isn’t a big fan however of the show, and said was “One Cirque Show Too Many” and points out that this was the second failure in the same theater.
“Zarkana” seemed to suffer from Cirque fatigue, which the company had otherwise sought to combat with its musically themed partnerships with the Beatles (“Love”) and Michael Jackson (“One.”)
The first Aria version of “Zarkana,” perhaps mistakenly, shed Littlemore’s English-language songs and most of the story about a magician who revives the ghosts of an abandoned theater in a bid to reunite with his lost love.
When the show retooled last year, even the magician was gone. What was left was a redundant variation of “Mystere,” which was fine with MGM Resorts International, since it had sold “Mystere” with the rest of Treasure Island to Phil Ruffin.
Good news is that MGM is getting rid of the theater, realizing that it might be a loser, and is turning it into a convention space.
