68 Best Performing Arts in Las Vegas, Nevada

Sometimes it’s not the elements but how they are combined. Absinthe became one of the most popular shows on the Strip by turning Cirque du Soleil's opulent, dreamlike aesthetic on its head. A downscale, shabby-chic vibe unifies circus acrobatics, raunchy comedy, and saucy burlesque numbers inside a cozy tent in front of Caesars Palace. (At least it’s a tentlike structure; fire inspectors insisted on a sturdy, semipermanent pavilion.) The audience surrounds the performances on a small, 9-foot stage. The festive, low-tech atmosphere is furthered along by the host, a shifty insult comic known as The Gazillionaire. This is cheap raunch with a wink, and audiences have been in on it since 2011.

The three bald, blue, and silent characters in utilitarian uniforms have become part of the Las Vegas landscape. The satire of technology and information-overload merges with classic physical comedy and the Blue Man's unique brand of interstellar rock and roll. The group's latest home, a cozy theater at Luxor, brings the Blue dudes closer to their off-Broadway origins: paint splattering, mouth-catching marshmallows, and rollicking percussion jam sessions on PVC pipe contraptions.

KÀ, Cirque du Soleil's biggest Las Vegas production, opened in 2006 and still stands as an amazing monument to the sky's-the-limit mentality that fueled Vegas in the go-go 2000s. The $165-million opus frees the stage itself from gravity, replacing a fixed stage with an 80,000-pound deck, maneuvered by a giant gantry arm into a near-vertical position for the climactic battle. Giant puppets also factor into the bold interpretation of live martial-arts period fantasies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in the adventures of two separated twins. Though no other Cirque in Las Vegas rivals it for sheer spectacle, those not sitting close enough to see faces can be confused by the story, which is told without dialogue.

Defying easy categorization, this hybrid attraction is at once familiar and wholly original. The immersive theater concept combines tasting rooms, a speakeasy environment, and an up-close view of the type of acrobatics and burlesque popularized by Absinthe. While it is a working rum distillery (short tours can be part of the experience), it's also a fanciful environment, not to mention a ticketed show—or rather, a series of small ones.

A basic package lets you sample as many as four high-octane rums as you wander through the maze of an elegantly surreal warehouse decorated to the last inch with ornate, turn-of-the-20th-century trappings. The corridors lead to a circular main stage and three smaller performance areas. The venue suggests you just "get lost" and divvy up your two hours as you seem fit, watching a few burlesque numbers, magic shows, cabaret singers, dancers, and acrobats swirling off the ground on straps or hoops. Tasting stations let you use a punch card to sample the rum straight-up—no ice, but bottled water is offered in generous stacks. You can also buy bottled cocktails. (Sorry wine and beer buffs, there’s no conventional bar or bartenders.) Add-on tickets might include a 1920s “seance” layered on a spooky magic/mentalism show, while “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” is a 16-course tasting menu in a sit-down room themed after the titular novel.

Meet the Beatles again—well, sort of—in a certified home run for Cirque du Soleil. Before he died, George Harrison persuaded the surviving Beatles (and Yoko Ono) to license the group's music to Cirque. The remixed music by the late Beatles producer George Martin and his son Giles is revelatory on 7,000 speakers, often like hearing the songs for the first time. In the summer of 2016, Cirque tweaked the show for its 10th anniversary, dialing down the elegiac version of postwar Liverpool and punching up the dance elements to emphasize the youth culture of Beatlemania. Cirque also added literal depictions of the Fab Four in videos and projection mapping for a great marriage of sensibilities that explodes with joy. Note: The show's future was uncertain after late 2023 as The Mirage transitions to the Hard Rock Hotel, but it seemed to have a shot at remaining at the Hard Rock, where it would certainly fit right in with the new theme and music memorabilia.

The reigning king of Las Vegas afternoons has reached his two-decade tenure on the Strip, now ensconced at medieval-themed Excalibur. (This being Vegas though, he shares a theater with the nighttime male revue Thunder from Down Under). These days, he greets the children of those who remember seeing his show when they were kids themselves. Onstage, King is ageless in his plaid suit and folksy "Howdy!" He's the perennial court jester rooted in vaudeville traditions of show business. A one-man hour of low-key, self-deprecating humor features the kind of close-up magic that's baffling but doesn't take the focus away from the running banter and audience participation.

More than $70 million was spent on Cirque du Soleil's theater at Bellagio back in 1998, and its liquid stage is the centerpiece of a one-of-a-kind show. It was money well spent: O remains one of the best-attended shows on the Strip. The title is taken from the French word for water (eau), and water is everywhere—1.5 million gallons of it, 12 million pounds of it, contained by a "stage" that, thanks to hydraulic lifts, can change shape and turn into dry land in no time. The intense and nonstop action by the show's acrobats, aerial gymnasts, trapeze artists, synchronized swimmers, divers, and contortionists make for a stylish spectacle that manages to fashion dreamlike imagery from its acrobatics, with a vague theme about the wellspring of theater and imagination.

Eccentric comic magicians Penn & Teller are more popular now than when they settled into the Rio in 2002. Ventures such as their durable TV magic contest Fool Us expanded the duo into mainstream culture beyond the Strip. Their magic in a gorgeous 1,500-seat theater remains topical and genuinely baffling, and their comedy is satiric, provocative, and thoughtful. The duo marked 30 years of Las Vegas performances in early 2023, all the more resonant because it was the 73-year-old Teller's return from a three-month break due to heart surgery.

Las Vegas got its very own ($150 million) world-class performing arts center in 2012, and what a spot it is. The multibuilding complex (complete with a bell tower) was designed to invoke 1930s-era art deco construction, the same motif you'll find at Hoover Dam. Here, this elegance graces the main concert hall, which anchors its calendar around a season of touring Broadway musicals and Las Vegas Philharmonic concerts, filling the in-between dates with touring concert acts and other attractions. The venue rivals that in any other city.

"What took them so long?" you might ask. A live version of America's Got Talent was a no-brainer once you go down the list of the former winners and contestants—from Terry Fator to Piff the Magic Dragon—many of whom ended up with ongoing residencies on the Strip. An attractively packaged variety show finally came to roost at Luxor in early 2022. The lineup packs as many as nine acts into 90 minutes, reflecting the NBC show's wide net: knife-throwing, magic, ventriloquists, you name it. The acts rotate; some are more or less permanent, while others come in for short stints. The winners who may not have a lot of stage experience are buffered by those who do, and ensembles such as Light Balance get an extra visual boost from the enhanced production elements of a stationary year-round revue.

The Strip's third naughty revue from Spiegelworld took its theme from the Western saloon vibe of an inherited venue in The Venetian's retail mall, creating the raucous atmosphere of a theme park revue gone off the rails. The flagship Absinthe is a better overall introduction to Spiegelworld's approach. But those who can't get enough of the formula will enjoy this Wild West variation on the campy hijinks, including barely clad acrobats, sexy cowboys and cowgirls, and . . . a nun?

This successor to the long-running Le Rêve is one of the biggest investments in year-round, general-interest shows since the peak years of Cirque du Soleil. Wynn spent $120 million dollars for an in-the-round fantasy about three characters who visit the realms of Water, Earth, and Air on a quest to appease some sort of queen who keeps yelling stuff like: “No one rests until my magic is returned to me!” If not entirely coherent in its early incarnation, Awakening is certainly beautiful. The aquatics of Le Rêve have been replaced by a “floating” hydraulic stage in pieces, state-of-the-art video projections, and colossal puppets (by Michael Curry, best known for co-designing the original puppets for The Lion King). Performers make their way down to the stage in giant translucent chutes. Personal stereo speakers in every seat guarantee there's no problem hearing Anthony Hopkins as the recorded narrator. And yet a lackluster opening raised questions of whether audiences have seen it all before in the likes of Cirque's KÀ or shifted their interest to star showcases. The show's main producer Baz Halpin (who also staged Katy Perry's Play) maintains that it's a work-in-progress.

The 7,000-seat concert hall was the first on the Strip when it was built as the Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts in 1976. Now, it's the only part of the original Aladdin to survive the conversion into Planet Hollywood. It was remodeled in 2013 to host Britney Spears, but its rotation of stars leaned country in 2023, with the likes of Miranda Lambert and Keith Urban. To create more of a club vibe, a VIP area and two general-admission standing-room areas were added down front. The balcony isn't used for a lot of the shows, bringing capacity down to a cozier 4,500. After a few years as the Zappos Theater, a name change and new branding partner came in early 2023.

Unlike its New York namesake, the Las Vegas Brooklyn Bowl only looks like it was retrofitted from an old warehouse. It was actually built from the ground up in 2014 as an anchor for The LINQ outdoor retail plaza. The Las Vegas location copies and expands upon the original by surrounding its concert space with 32 bowling lanes and food outlets offering fried chicken and other goodies from the Blue Ribbon group. The live concert lineup still favors jam bands when possible. Most of the concert space is standing-room only, so arrive early if you want a shot at the limited seating without paying for VIP upgrades.

Talk about aging in place. It's been more than 17 years since the prop comic with the eternal college-party vibe moved his trunks full of tricks into Luxor, where he became the Strip's longest-running year-round comedian. The Florida native known offstage as Scott Thompson still is most unique when wielding his visual gags, and he sells them with a manic energy, a tourist's street-level view of Vegas, and a running commentary on the act itself, perhaps a sly nod to his eternal lack of respect.

Score one for the ladies: the Rio builds a theater dedicated to the men of Chippendales, surrounds it with a lounge and gift shop, and makes "girls night out" an identified (and coveted) Las Vegas target demographic. The show has fancier staging than any G-string revue traveling on the nightclub circuit, and the bow-tied hunks keep it respectable enough to let Mom tag along with the bachelorette party. Celebrity guest hosts such as Vinny Guadagnino from Jersey Shore join the fun at strategic times of the year.

Criss Angel lives up to his Goth-rock image with the loudest magic show in town, full of blistering music in a Planet Hollywood theater that's been customized with wraparound video walls and surround sound to create a clublike atmosphere. What is unchanged from Angel's long run at Luxor is how much this one depends on whether you like the magician. Angel is consistent in his Long Island rock-star image, even as the fast-paced barrage of illusions unfold with a schizophrenic tone that shifts from heavy-metal sinister to rave-up dance party.

The master magician has made Las Vegas a part of his career since the 1980s and now roosts at the MGM Grand for more than 40 weeks per year. At this point in his mid-60s, Copperfield is sort of the Rolling Stones of magic; you sense his authority and submit to it from the minute the show opens and trust him to wow you with illusions, such as the one involving a T. rex, which take years to perfect. He varies the pace with illusions that can be touching or funny, but most of all they still genuinely fool you.

MGM Resorts needed a venue to compete with The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, so the company tore down the Monte Carlo's old showroom to build this flexible venue (which opened as the Park Theater). It can hold up to 6,000 people for concerts, but it also hosts boxing and mixed martial arts. Bruno Mars, Usher, Maroon 5, and the Jonas Brothers were 2023 highlights. Unlike most of these venues, the lobby with its elegant furnishings and picture windows is a place you don't mind hanging out before the show.

No one should question either Donny Osmond's work ethic or his showmanship. What began as a "late career" reunion with sister Marie turned into an 11-year run at the Flamingo. Now, he's going solo next door at Harrah's Las Vegas, with momentum from The Masked Singer (he was the Peacock, you know) and a pop album of new music, Start Again. He's a "down front" entertainer drawing from his six decades in show business, displaying a congenial self-awareness in a showcase that covers everything from his child star days in the 1960s to his credible attempts to keep up with current musical trends. This old-school Vegas showcase also includes dancers and production visuals, but it's really all about the stage presence of a perennial who grew up in front of America and wears his variety training with pride.

Wynn's 1,480-seat "regular" theater—next door to the circular one that hosts Awakening—has quite a history, having hosted everything from Broadway musicals to Garth Brooks's first solo-acoustic residency. Of late it's been the home base for comedians, such as Nate Bargatze, and musicians, including Bryan Adams, Jack Johnson, and Brad Paisley's Acoustic Storyteller show. Most of the seats are on the floor, but there's a 12-row mezzanine.

Fantasy is a topless show (un)dressed up as a variety show, with power-pop singing by its female host and magic or acrobatic acts to widen its appeal beyond the topless choreography. It's the least strip club–like of the Las Vegas topless revues, so it's not uncommon to see couples in the audience at this durable show that's been around since 1999.

The Canadian impressionist has been a Las Vegas presence for years, specializing in song parodies delivered with a manic silliness. Women will warm up to a guy good-looking enough to be a retro crooner, and men will recognize the kid from their middle school who memorized MAD magazine. (Of late Brown has a reduced schedule of two nights per week, sharing the theater with veteran musical acts.)

Magic maestro David Copperfield has come to dominate the schedule about 40 weeks a year at the MGM Grand. The old-Vegas booths are cool, but at least half the crowd of 700 or so is packed into tight table seating. It's not very comfortable, but the sight lines are decent and the sound quality is good in a room that is, oddly, about the only part of the MGM that hasn't been remodeled since the early 1990s.

The Las Vegas branch of this chain books one-night concerts that tend to skew toward younger, heavier hard-rock bands and all-ages shows. That said, Carlos Santana has become somewhat branded with the room after more than 300 shows there. As with other branches, rustic folk art covers the walls and the Gospel Brunch is a Sunday staple. This one differs from other locations, however, in having a balcony level with reserved theater seating along with the general-admission floor that accommodates about 1,200.

The only Las Vegas performers who don't show their faces speak with their feet in a show that appeals to the younger nightclub demographic. The masked hip-hop dance collective has steadily improved its showmanship since it settled on the Strip in 2010. There's plenty of break dancing but also a contagious sense of fun, as comedy and warm-hearted themes of brotherhood and inclusiveness emerge from those blank masks. The troupe's latest home in a 300-seat theater allows only four to six of the dancers onstage at the same time, but video projections expand the sense of space.

Las Vegas's oldest community theater was hard-hit by pandemic closures but keeps on ticking. A main-stage season of six or more titles is sometimes augmented by smaller, more adventurous "Black Box" works, and there is usually a summer festival of "fringe" comedy or new works. Productions are staged in a sparse but comfortable theater in an increasingly crowded strip mall on the edge of Las Vegas's Chinatown.

Formed in 1998, the Philharmonic performs a nine-show season (September through May) under the baton of Donato Cabrera, mixing the classics with more commercial fare such as tributes to John Williams. The orchestra performs at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts downtown. A series of intimate "Spotlight" concerts in a small studio theater augments the main series in the big hall. 

Mad Apple is Cirque du Soleil on a budget, more like what you might see on tour than the company's other Las Vegas extravaganzas. After the pandemic and changes within the company, Cirque downsized its more grandiose ambitions to create a modest cabaret-style show. Music and comedy get nearly as much stage time as the acrobatics, and there's a pre-show bar right onstage in the cozy U-shape theater that previously housed Cirque's more ambitious Zumanity. This show is clearly Cirque's answer to its competitor Absinthe, and yet the two have distinct tones beyond their shared acrobatics and ribald jokes. In keeping with the title and host property's theme, New York–themed songs and imagery—a yellow cab, a disco ball shaped like an apple—loosely connect the now familiar action, such as hand-balancing and a sexy aerial adagio. The big departures from past Cirque shows are the amount of stage time given to the comedy magician (Harrison Greenbaum in the early months) and bringing the singers and musicians off the risers to perform alongside the acrobats. You probably wouldn't want to choose this one over the more mind-blowing Cirque shows if you haven't seen them, but it's consistent fun if you have.

Channing Tatum didn't just cash a check to lend the name of his Magic Mike film franchise to a Las Vegas effort. He was an active member of the creative team, working with the movie's two female choreographers for this male revue that debuted in 2017 (originally at the Hard Rock Hotel). A new custom venue, converted from convention space at the Sahara, allows for aerialists and in-the-round action. Magic Mike Live still pairs the G-string antics with a nice-guy vibe and with more wit and modesty—some gals will say too much—than the genre usually allows. Spoiler alert: it even goes so far as to stage a "fake out" opening, spoofing the more typical male revues before introducing a female emcee.