However, Robson had cold feet about the project initially, until Denoncourt flew to New York to personally assure him there would be "nothing 'cute' about this show."
"I knew it was Criss Angel. I'm thinking, 'Magic? Dance? This coud be really cheesy,' " Robson said. "When you think of a magic show with dance, you think, 'Ta-da!' and the magician leaves and a couple of dancers come on and do a number. But none of the illusions happens just for the sake of the 'wow' factor. They happen to move the story along."
In July, Denoncourt summed up a certain battle of showbiz wills surrounding the production that seems prophetic in light of Ste-Croix's jabs about Angel. "There's a lot of ego in the building," Denoncourt said. "But we managed to be kind and respectful to each other. The biggest challenge on a day-to-day basis was that."
But "Believe" -- for which tickets are between $59 and $160 -- is up against other storm fronts as well. There's Angel's workload: performing two shows a day, five days a week for a decade in addition to conceiving and performing illusions for "Mindfreak." ("I'm a workaholic," he said.) And concerns persist that the economic crisis will continue to wither Las Vegas' economy even as Cirque moves forward on developing a new production based around Elvis that is scheduled to open at the Aria Hotel next year.
"Believe's" grand opening has been pushed back twice because of "technical difficulties," and Angel and Denoncourt have repeatedly shot down rumors about their infighting, but the magician seemed constitutionally incapable of voicing apprehension about failure.
"I don't fear death. So anything that happens is just something you learn from," he said. "We want this show to be a celebration of life: its ups, its downs and in betweens. The spectrum. That's what we're putting into it. We want that 90 minutes to be deep, poetic and beautiful."
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chris.lee@latimes.com
