The Beatles and Cirque du Soleil have created a stunning spectacle Love The Mirage, Las Vegas

The average West End musical has one magical moment. Maybe two, if you are lucky. But in Las Vegas, audiences expect a bit more bang for their buck. And, indeed, Love, the tribute to the Beatles from Cirque du Soleil, gives you 90 breathtaking minutes of magic. With the full co-operation of the surviving members of the band, together with the help of Sir George Martin and the original Abbey Road recordings - with the soundtrack for the show released in the UK by EMI last week - Love is probably the best theatrical spectacular I have ever seen.

I wasn't expecting it to be. The idea of a Beatles tribute night was worrying: witnessing a Vegas crowd downing "Can't Buy Me Love" cocktails ($14.50) and buying glossy programmes ($15) from usherettes dressed in Beatles-themed costumes in the Mirage Hotel, where the show has set up residence, I feared the worst.

But the opening number, when giant silhouettes of the band cascade to the ground, acrobats soar up into the roof and confetti showers on to the audience, simply exploded my conservative fears. Faced with a sensory onslaught from all sides, it was all I could do to sit and listen to the voices of the Fab Four singing "Because" accompanied only by birdsong.

Yes, birdsong. This is a show that confounds expectations. Performers appear on stage holding umbrellas smoking with incense. Wellington boots dance on their own; rollerskaters shoot across steel contraptions; dancers cascade from awesome heights attached to golden globes. To the songs of the Beatles.

It works because Love's director, the gloriously named Dominic Champagne, has wisely steered away from some cheesy lookey-likey show and, thanks to the budget that Cirque du Soleil can clearly command, let rip.

The songs are loosely joined together by a vague storyline involving a gauche young man in search of love, but when you are dealing with a repertory as well-known as the Beatles back catalogue, plot is unnecessary. The skeleton of the night is our affection for the songs; Cirque du Soleil has merely clothed it with peerless sound, faultless physical bravura and astonishing visual effects that laugh in the face of cliché and conjure up almighty tricks. Yes, it's a circus, but one that you will have never previously envisaged.

Eleanor Rigby wanders on pulling a train of goods behind her - a pram, a gramophone player, a birdcage - while, 50ft above, bundles of old brass instruments are suspended and a man flies a kite. Why? Because it's beautiful, and elegiac. Autumn leaves drop down during "Yesterday"; "Strawberry Fields Forever" sees enormous bubbles fill the stage; George Harrison's "Something" is transformed into an aerial ballet where four women dressed in lingerie swoop down from the heights, dancing erotically in the air against an op-art backdrop. It is dangerously magnetic, sexy and wonderful. Then we were all covered with a giant parachute silk, after which the entire auditorium was plunged into darkness to reveal thousands of diamond lights seemingly floating in space, while a single woman dressed in a glittering bodysuit, suspended only by her ankle, spun from a rope. Lucy in the sky with diamonds, you see.

The Fab Four appear fleetingly, in silhouette, or as four laughing schoolboys on a big brass bed. Aurally, however, they are omnipresent. What little speech there is comes mostly from their matey chats, presumably recorded at Abbey Road. We hear the band joshing, playing around with their instruments, humming little songs. Ringo sings (everyone groans). Paul plays the opening bars of "Let It Be". It is tantalising and mesmerising; a window into the workings of a quartet whose art revolutionised popular culture.

Why Love? I suppose it was the band's overarching point. And so, at the end, when Sergeant Pepper hopes we've all enjoyed the show and we rose to give the performers their due acclaim, the chords from the "Marseillaise" boomed out and, at last, in archive film, we saw John, Paul, George and Ringo reminding us that it is all we need. I'm not a gambling type, but if you have to go to Las Vegas, clear a night to see this show.

Pick of the week

Thérèse Raquin
Lyttelton Theatre, London SE1
Feverish stuff from Emile Zola with Charlotte Emmerson and Ben Daniels.

Faust
21 Wapping Lane, London E1
Punchdrunk's radical version of the story told over five floors of a disused Wapping warehouse - complete with rock'n'roll band.

Cabaret
Lyric Theatre, London W1
Brutal, sexy, great song and dance.

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