The most beautiful, worst show I've ever seen.

On my recent trip to Vegas, we decided to get some last minute show tickets and since Felix refused to see Donnie and Marie, we ended up seeing Chris Angel Believe at the Luxor. The show is another spectacle imagined by the wizards of Cirque du Soleil. And as is the Cirque way, this show is beautiful right from the moment you walk through the doors. The halls are lined with amazing lenticulars featuring Angel and other characters from the show appearing to change mystically. Lenticulars are used even more effectively behind the bar in the theater. Here a rich red curtain appears to part revealing magical rabbits.

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Then there’s the stage with one of the best red curtains I’ve seen, all surrounded by a gilt proscenium sculpted with more magic rabbits. And as you’d expect with Cirque du Soleil, there was an amazing cast of dancers dressed in a spectacle of costumes.

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Even with all that, this show still sucks. Why? Well, because of Chris Angel. Angel performs a whole bunch of standard, boring magic tricks that you’ve seen a million times before. Not once during the show did I find myself asking, “Wow, how did he do that?” (Except maybe when he showed the video clip from his TV show.) Sure, I may not know the particulars of the tricks, but I had a pretty good idea about the general principles for each trick.

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I know it sounds harsh, but Chris Angel Believe would be a whole lot better without Chris Angel. Maybe Donnie and Marie wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

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