Dork Age/Theater


 * Cirque Du Soleil has had a few missteps in tour itineraries and miscellaneous projects (such as entertainment for the Celebrity Cruises line) that went over poorly, but for the live shows that serve as the company's backbone, the company generally works hard to improve troubled productions and refine good ones, so even a rocky start can pay off later. But in doing more and more shows and trying to put new twists on their usual fare, they've hit a few Dork Ages in The New Tens.
 * Criss Angel Believe is a magic show collaboration with the illusionist. With high expectations as their sixth resident show in Las Vegas (facing locals fatigued with their omnipresence), their first magic show, and their first show built around a specific performer, it opened to almost universally negative critical reviews and even nastier audience response in 2008. It's still running and professional reviews have improved, but that was due mostly to the bulk of Cirque-typical elements being dropped in a Retool.
 * Banana Shpeel was a Vaudeville-inspired variation on the company's house style (with much more time given to comedy acts than the norm) and their first show for "legit" theaters, doing a tryout run in Chicago before hitting New York City in the spring of 2010. Heavy retooling in the wake of poor reviews for the tryout delayed the NYC opening by three months... which meant that it opened after their traditional tent tour OVO arrived in the city for a two-month run, instead of before. While reviews were better in New York, they weren't as good as OVO's, and Banana Shpeel wound up closing two months sooner than planned. A New York Times article detailing what went wrong is here. A North American tour was planned even after the closure in New York, but scuppered after its opening engagement in Toronto flopped -- making it the first Cirque show in years to actually close outright due to a lack of interest. (In late 2011-early 2012, there was a small purge of Cirque shows, with Macau's ZAIA, Tokyo's ZED, and Las Vegas' Viva Elvis all closing after each ran less than four years, but they're not dork ages since they weren't trying anything new; in fact, ZED only closed because tourism in Japan was crippled by the 2011 earthquake/tsunami.)