7 must-see Las Vegas shows for 2025

It’s a task to see everything Las Vegas offers in live entertainment. It’s even task-ier to whittle down your list to those deserving special attention. We’re doing just that with our Lucky 7-Pack of shows to catch this year.

This list covers some expected terrain, and some productions that are under the city’s carriage, but there is not a dud in the bunch. Cue the orchestra:

‘Mavericks’

I will die on this mountain — or in this showroom — arguing that downtown can support a top-level residency production. Creator Amy Saunders is putting on a world-class comedy, circus, burlesque and variety show. She is the mistress of ceremonies, a fantastic improv comic who is also an impressive sword-swallower.

The acts rotate (in more ways than one) and play into the crowd. We have jugglers, a zombie-hand act, some sexy magic and cheap FizzyWater.

No two “Mavericks” shows are alike, other than they are affordable, starting at $35 a pop. As Saunders says, “We’re not putting a story over the top of anything. You’re gonna walk into a beautiful room that you are going to enjoy being in. We will be on stage going, ‘Hello, I see you. Up for a good time? Here’s a great act. Hey, again, here’s another great act. Hey, the bars are really cheap. P.S., here’s another great act.’ ”

This is among the last authentic Vegas showroom experiences, on the very parcel where the city was born. Get there.

Penn & Teller

You only celebrate a 50th anniversary once. P&T are at that point in ’25, touring Australia (beginning with eight shows at the Sydney Opera House) through February, playing a one-off at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in August and headlining an 11-show run at the London Palladium in September. They continue to anchor the Rio, their Las Vegas performance home since January 2001. And the 11th season of “Penn & Teller: Fool Us” premieres Jan. 24 with a 50th-anniversary episode.

What else? Ah, the guys are featured in “Beyond Saturday Night,” a four-part doc about “Saturday Night Live” premiering this week on Peacock. P&T were featured eight times on “The Weird Year” of 1985. But the show survived, and obviously so have Penn & Teller.

‘Mad Apple’

In May 2022, Cirque du Soleil downsized and went with an NYC theme at New York-New York. Skeptics thought this show was too meager to replace “Zumanity,” which had run there at double the scale. But the rapid-fire acts, comedy, live music and (again) variety have over time made this a Cirque hit.

Bob Marley Hope Road

The walk-around experience dedicated to the spirit of Bob Marley opens this summer at the former Bayside Buffet space at Mandalay Bay.

The reggae legend’s son Ziggy Marley is co-producer of Hope Road, which is set to be open seven days a week with two attractions.

Hope Road by Day is a walk-through, multisensory experience with digital and analog installations, musical and visual effects to bring Bob Marley’s messages of truth, freedom and “one love” to the fore. Hope Road by Night is an intimate live show buoyed by Marley’s music, with a cast of performers “representing the kaleidoscope that is humanity.”

Dita Von Teese

The “Queen of Burlesque” returns to The Venetian’s Voltaire nightspot at the end of this month. She is full glam in costumes from the “Jubilee” collection. The show pops more effectively than it did at the Jubilee Theatre at the Horseshoe, formerly Bally’s and home to “Jubilee,” the lavish showgirl production that ended its three-decade run in 2016.

Several of Von Teese’s backing dancers appear in Pamela Anderson’s new Las Vegas-set big-screen drama “The Last Showgirl,” but Von Teese’s show is not a traditional showgirl production. She blends her burlesque striptease with a cast of all shapes and sizes (and genders). The result is beautiful — a chic, classy, only-in-Vegas experience.

New Kids on the Block

The original boy band is reassembling for a run at Dolby Live at Park MGM. Dubbed “The Right Stuff,” the residency covers two dozen dates from Valentine’s Day through Nov. 15. Jonathan Knight, Jordan Knight, Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg and Danny Wood are all back in action for this run.

As Wahlberg said when the series was announced in September: “It’s crazy. It’s surreal. It’s something we talked about when we were kids, ‘One day when we’re old and retired, we’ll go there.’ Well, we ain’t retired, and we ain’t retiring, and we’re here.”

‘Awakening’

The show for which “It’s a lot!” is an understatement enters its third year. Maybe you can’t keep up with all the action in this exercise in technical overkill. But “Awakening” stands alone in its grandiosity and self-confidence in this massive residency production.

Baz Halpin’s sense of aesthetics, Michael Curry’s puppetry, the magic touch of Bernie Yuman and support engineered by Wynn Las Vegas CEO Craig Billings and entertainment director Rick Gray have kept “Awakening” in play. We expect more modifications this spring.

Similar to the pushback that “Mad Apple” has overcome at New York-New York, “Awakening” has experienced an undercurrent of doubt in stepping in for “Le Reve” at Wynn. This is the year we learn if “Awakening” was a noble, $120 million experiment or is here for the long term. I’m betting on the latter.

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on X, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.