24 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A winning smile (and winning America's Got Talent) turned out to be a formidable combination for a young magician who settled on the Strip after the TV talent show fast-tracked his fame in 2014. Franco's charm and likable attitude compensates for a streamlined production, on a mostly bare stage augmented by video screens. But he makes the classics seem new to a younger audience, and the show builds to a big finale in two bits of trickery that both involve the wider audience.

The campy musical full of song parodies about "the change" has been a female-bonding experience on the Strip since 2006. The audience commiserates, sings along, and sometimes even ends up onstage with the four women in the cast as they bond while cavorting through a day at Bloomingdales.

The likable magician had the good fortune to be on the very first, highly watched season of America's Got Talent in 2006, parlaying that national exposure into a durable career on the Strip. Burton puts a fun spin on familiar illusions and is family-friendly for those with older children. Mom and Dad will smile because the tickets are routinely discounted.

Absinthe producer Spiegelworld carried the momentum and winning formula of raunchy humor and scantily clad acrobatics over to OPM (changed from Opium to reflect a 2022 revamp) at The Cosmopolitan. If Absinthe is "shabby chic" with folding chairs and the like, this one goes the other direction and is elevated by a very cool venue reminiscent of the supper clubs you see in old movies. The show venue is adjacent to Spiegelworld's restaurant Superfrico, and some of the show elements cross-pollinate. (A common knock on the show is that it doesn't stand alone quite as successfully as Absinthe.) The visuals tap into the swanky retro sci-fi of Barbarella and Forbidden Planet, but OPM leans more into a gay camp aesthetic in its costuming, humor, and overall tone.

Billing himself as "The Loser of America's Got Talent" fits the droll humor of the British comedy-magician, whose goal of competing on the TV show was to get a berth in Las Vegas. It worked. The magician who stands out for his satin dragon suit, bad attitude, and stoic chihuahua sidekick, Mr. Piffles, keeps the jokes coming as fast as the card tricks, and pulls plenty of recruits from the audience. It's a testament to Piff's popularity that he's moved from the Flamingo's smaller cabaret to its main showroom.

Drag shows came close to extinction on the Strip until RuPaul transferred the popularity of his cable TV enterprise into a live spin-off. The format allows performers to rotate in and out of the revue, so the lineup isn't consistent, though don't look for the actual RuPaul beyond surprise appearances or special occasions.

The 20,000-seat, $375 million arena opened in 2016 and instantly became the home of top-tier concerts and sporting events such as UFC fights and the Pac 12 Men's Basketball Tournament. It's the first Las Vegas arena built with 50 luxury boxes. Concerts have to be booked around home games by the arena's resident team, the Vegas Golden Knights, the National Hockey League expansion team that went all the way to the Stanley Cup finals in its debut season of 2017–18.

Tape Face joins the long line of America's Got Talent variety performers to move in on the Strip—near fellow contestants Shin Lim, Mat Franco, and Piff the Magic Dragon—after mainstream exposure from the TV competition. Tape Face hearkens back to a simpler era of show business, with his silent mime and prop comedy based on the signature gimmick of gaffer's tape plastered over his mouth. He uses his eyes, gestures, and quite a few recruits from the audience to propel the charmingly low-fi shenanigans. (Sam Wills, the creator of Tape Face, generated some controversy when he decided to treat his character more like a Blue Man and less like a Piff. In other words, when Wills is out on tour, another performer he trained to do the act steps in at Harrah's.)

The Cosmopolitan's 40,000-square-foot venue is elegantly trimmed but a versatile bare box in its layout. The floor can offer seating or general-admission standing room, wrapped by a gallery of limited fixed seating, five rows deep, and an in-between area that can be either bleacher seating or more standing room. It usually hosts smaller-capacity concerts for 2,000 or more, with rockers Jane's Addiction and comedian Gabriel Iglesias among the recent attractions.

The $95-million theater invented the current model for concert residencies when it was built for Celine Dion in 2003. More recently the 4,300-seater was remodeled to be more versatile and allow general-admission space up front for younger-skewing acts. A new video system and VIP booth areas were added in time for the much-touted Adele residency. Garth Brooks staked out the Colosseum for 2023, with veterans Jerry Seinfeld, Rod Stewart, and Sting also in the mix. The two balconies can seem distant from the ridiculously wide 120-foot stage, but a huge video screen improves the views, and the sound system is impeccable.

This comfortable, 1,250-seat theater will apparently survive a gradual remodeling of the entire property into a Hard Rock Hotel. Longtime resident ventriloquist Terry Fator and some of the fixture comedians, such as Gabriel Iglesias, have moved to other properties, but the room still saw plenty of use in 2023 from magician Shin Lim and longtime comedians such as Ray Romano and Daniel Tosh. The collectively branded Aces of Comedy will reportedly remain with a new lineup under the name Center Stage Comedy.

Built for a six-year run of Phantom of the Opera and appropriately designed like a European opera house, this 1,800-seat theater has since hosted a variety of short-term and weekend performers. It may still seem a little ornate for ZZ Top, but they and other classic rockers such as Chicago and Styx have become the theater's mainstays. Even the top balcony seats and views are fine, though a bit of a stair climb unless you use the elevator.

This mid-price (and frequently discounted) variety show has held its own against the splashier Cirque-type productions for more than 20 years. The lineup varies, but it usually has magic, juggling, and acrobatics such as hand balancing. Perhaps the real secret is the “front of curtain” atmosphere with likable performers making direct contact with the audience in an intimate setting.

Everyone loves the idea of Wayne Newton. They just don't love his singing voice, which “The Midnight Idol” fried through decades of smoky showroom performances. And so, the smart switch to a (mostly) Q&A, autobiographical format in a cozy cabaret setting. Newton is still a one-of-a-kind personality who once again plays to his strengths, turning the bulk of his current show into a live memoir packed with film clips and stories about his career and the golden age of Vegas.

This is no old-timey burlesque. Instead, an edgy attitude permeates this dance-intensive topless revue with impressive video and lighting effects. A comedian doing a 10-minute set is the only spoken contact with the audience. It's closer to a strip-club vibe than the more theatrical Fantasy at Luxor, which should serve as a recommendation to some and a warning to others. But even the more intense gyrations are leavened with a winking humor.