Cirque’s Biggest Splash

In the parched desert, a temple has arisen for the worship of water. Within an 1,800-seat theater at the new Bellagio hotel, a ritual honoring the wet stuff takes place twice nightly, five days a week.

It’s called “O,” named after the sound that visitors make when they learn that tickets to these aquatic services cost $90 or $100, making this Vegas’ highest-priced show.

No, actually, the title is from the French word for water, eau, befitting the French Canadian origins of Cirque du Soleil, the company that created this mesmerizing marine extravaganza.

In some ways, this Cirque show is like any other: acrobats, contortionists, clowns, surreal dreamscapes, a magnetic musical score (by Benoit Jutras) with indecipherable lyrics.

But unlike other Cirque shows, this one features a pool. It holds 1.5 million gallons of water in a space that expands and contracts throughout the performance, reaching maximum dimensions of 150-by-100-by-25 feet.

On a practical level, this creates opportunities for acts previously unseen at the Cirque--Acapulco-style cliff divers, synchronized swimmers, acrobats who go swingin’ in the rain.

It also eliminates the need for most nets. If the overhead fliers don’t catch each other, they simply fall into the pool (this happened once at the performance I saw). Or they purposely take the plunge at the end of their act.

On a more symbolic level, all that H2O conjures up a wealth of archetypal images that writer-director Franco Dragone artfully exploits. With water’s crucial role in our survival, the substance has acquired an enormous mythical and cultural significance. Dragone and company remind us of it at every turn.

As with most Cirque shows, the action begins in the sharply raked audience area before the show. Clowns Dimitro Bogatirev and Iryna Ivanytska enter with pots to catch leaks that suddenly appear overhead, and enlist audience members to help. The leaks suggest that the theater’s blue metal-mesh dome is all that protects us from a deluge. Then an angelic acrobat descends from that dome in order to reassure us that more than floods await us.

A young man dressed rather like Aladdin is our surrogate as he’s beckoned by a hand that appears from behind the enormous red curtain at the front of the stage. With the assistance of a Prospero-like guide, the curtain lifts in a poof from Aladdin’s lamp, and we see the Dali-esque landscape behind it, designed by Michel Crete.

Besides the pool, which magically appears and disappears, the stage features a huge backdrop that resembles a driftwood wall and a giant O-shaped device far above the stage that moves performers and their rigging back and forth.

A chorus line of 16 synchronized swimmers (coached by Olympic gold medalist Sylvie Frechette) first appear upside down, their feet gliding across the surface of the pool like ducks. They’re around during the rest of the show, enveloping the featured acts in atmosphere.

A raft full of spectral-looking figures transforms into a colorful, acrobatic party. In the “Bateau” act, a double-masted steel-frame ship floats between sea and sky, providing a platform for gymnasts, and then rocks as if in a storm, creating a display of aerial acrobatics.

The clowns perform on a floating iceberg, trying to disembark in comical contrast to the more difficult human challenges in “O.” Eventually they send an audience member floating off alone on the iceberg into the backstage area, and they turn a shark into something far less menacing.

Fire appears in the middle of all that liquid. Besides flaming batons and giant blazes simulated by billowing fabric, this act features a man who sits quietly reading a newspaper, seemingly unaware that the chair, the paper and his clothes are ablaze.

The most jubilant number depicts a honeymoon celebration, in sly reference to the city’s many wedding chapels. Couples run down the aisles and dance while wearing wedding outfits, some of which they then shed in order to clamber aboard three huge swings, from which they take high-flying plunges into the water, turning it momentarily into the best swimming hole imaginable.

The show’s final image is its most haunting; while we applaud, the performers slowly sink under the water, as if they’re returning home to Atlantis.

We leave “O” not just humming the tunes but also yearning for a swim. Unfortunately, the Bellagio pool is closed at that hour. But anyone thirsty for more water spectacle can go to the front of the hotel, where fountains bigger even than those in “O” perform to the strains of Copland--for free.

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* “O,” Bellagio Hotel, 3600 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Fridays-Tuesdays, 7:30 and 11 p.m. (888) 488-7111. $90-$100.