I found it hard to believe that anything could be as beyond-words fabulous as "LOVE" was purported to be by both the media as well as friends and acquaintances who had seen the Cirque du Soleil celebration of the Beatles at Mirage Las Vegas.

But yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And "LOVE" is indeed everything I had heard it is - and then some. To put it more succinctly, I have never seen a more spectacular amalgamation of whimsy, wonder and WOW! in my 35 years as an entertainment critic.

Calling "LOVE" just another Cirque du Soleil show is as silly as saying the Beatles were just another rock band. Rather, it is the culmination of the boundary-defying stagecraft the Cirque organization has been conjuring in the Nevada desert for the better part of two decades, melded with what is arguably the 20th- century's greatest, most enduring body of musical work.

Despite its concept, "LOVE" isn't is a mere tribute to the four Mop Tops from Liverpool, England, who changed pop music and pop culture forever during their seven-year run as a performing and recording unit. That road has been traveled by every musician who has ever donned a Moe Howard wig and strapped on a Hofner violin-shaped bass guitar.

That it isn't just another Cirque rave-up is evident in the format of the show, which opened at the Mirage in 2006. Whether in such Vegas institutions as "O," "Ka" and "Mystere," or any of the numerous touring productions, the focus has generally been on the troupes of acrobats, contortionists, jugglers and the like that are the French Canadian organization's calling cards.

Here, such performers are just part of a much larger picture also painted by a sizable corps of dancers (under the supervision of Dave St. Pierre) - who provide more choreography than I've ever seen in a Cirque program - as well as the unseen sound, costume, props and lighting technicians who weave their own brand of magic.

In many segments, the circus acts are almost lost in the sensory onslaught and perpetual motion that define "LOVE."

Not that some don't get a chance to shine, most notably the quartet of roller-skating whizzes who defy gravity to the strains of "Help," and the trampoline masters who likewise amaze as "Revolution" blares over the awesome sound system.

That creator-director Dominic Champagne can keep so much attention-grabbing activity from devolving into pointless chaos is nothing short of miraculous (as is the idea that anyone could conceive such an audacious endeavor to begin with).

Even the performance space itself is part of the show. "LOVE" doesn't unfold on a typical proscenium stage but in a 360-degree environment whose settings are constantly reconfigured according to the demands of a particular sequence. Sometimes there is nothing but a series of catwalks proscribing huge empty spaces from which ascend all manner of sets and performers. Other times, the cast goes through its paces on a full platform (this changing-stage trick is borrowed from "O," which calls the Bellagio home).

Of course, this being Cirque du Soleil, there is a rather obscure "story" involved, this one being of a journey the audiences goes on with a quartet of "Nowhere Men" who show up in most of the vignettes but whose presence is never quite made clear, as there is no spoken script.

While the first portion of the ultra-trippy, 90-minute extravaganza references some of the forces (the German bombings of Liverpool during World War II, the 1964 detonation of Beatlemania) that helped write the band's story, it is hardly a history lesson. Instead, "LOVE" is a series of wildly imaginative and technologically wondrous set pieces that interpret not just the lyrics of dozens of tunes, but their moods and themes and, perhaps, their meanings.

Thus, the yearning ballad "Something" comes to life as an elegant aerial ballet featuring four female trapeze artists and a stage-bound male acrobat. And "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" is presented as a bizarre circus tableau - complete with a menagerie of nightmarish characters - that comes off like a collaboration between Salvador Dali and Timothy Leary.

Oh yeah, while all of this is going on, there is the deservedly celebrated soundtrack, a glorious uber-mash-up conceived and executed by Sir George Martin, the knob-turning studio wizard who rightly earned the sobriquet "The Fifth Beatle," and his son, Giles.

The Martins essentially stripped all the included songs down to their basic tracks and reworked, reinvented and reimagined them in ways that rendered them at once completely familiar and new.

For instance, on the aforementioned "Something," the duo apparently kept George Harrison's original vocals and the string arrangement while removing the tune's bass, drums and electric guitar parts.

On many occasions, songs seamlessly segue in delightfully unexpected ways (e.g., "Strawberry Fields Forever" resolves on the wordless vocals of "The Two of Us," and "Mr. Kite" concludes with the repeated bass-guitar riff that ends "I Want You"/"She's So Heavy").

I could go on, but if you've gotten this far, you get the idea. I'm still not sure any show is worth the time, effort and expense involved in getting to Vegas. But if one could be, that show, without question, is "LOVE."

Mirage Las Vegas, 3400 S. Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas, Nev., 7 and 9:30 p.m. Thursday through Monday, 800-963-9634, www.cirquedusoleil.com.

Chuck Darrow has covered Atlantic City and casinos for more than 20 years. Read his blog http://go.philly.com/

casinotes.

E-mail him at

darrowc@phillynews.com.

And listen to his Atlantic City report Saturdays at 1:25 a.m. with Steve Trevelise on WIP (610-AM).