Buried in the “In Brief” section of our sister publication, the Las Vegas Review Journal is a potentially fascinating item. Scroll down to the sixth blurb, “Wynn Las Vegas buying rights to show” and you’ll see the little-heralded news that Steve Wynn is forking over almost $16 million to buy erstwhile production partner Franco Dragone out of Le Reve, the Cirque du Soleil-like production show that has been limping along at Wynn Las Vegas for the past year. Yahoo Finance hasn’t posted the relevant SEC filing, but you can read it on the Wynn Resorts Web site — provided that you can cope with the faux arty white-on-brown print.

Le Reve, memorably (if somewhat pretentiously) described by Wynn himself as “a collection of imperfect moments,” has been more like a truckload of migraine headaches for the Strip megaresort. Initially requiring 175 technicians and 68 performers, it was plagued by early technical problems that required it to open with a truncated performance schedule. Another harbinger of difficulty came when Wynn Resorts made heavy ad buys for Le Reve on local TV, suggesting that early ticket sales were slow. No other Cirque- or Dragone-created show in recent memory has been so copiously flogged on the Vegas airwaves.

Even before Wynn gave Dragone his golden handshake, it had been announced that Le Reve was going dark on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the rest of 2006. According to a Dragone spokeswoman, the showman is busy fine-tuning a new show in Montreal and can’t rejigger Le Reve on the fly. Even if he could, Wynn’s proposed solution of adding lasers, explosions and more dancers sounds un-Cirque-like … suspiciously Olde Vegas, in fact. The Associated Press reports that choreographer Moses Pendleton has been hired to do the deed. It’s unclear whether Le Reve will go dark while the changes are made, leaving Wynn Las Vegas without any theatrical offerings, or whether Robinson will have to tweak as he goes.

The timing of the announcement is inauspicious for theatre on the Strip. Not only does it come less than a fortnight after the closing of Wynn Las Vegas’ presentation of Avenue Q but hard on the heels of the posting of the closing notice for Luxor’s run of Hairspray. At least MGM Mirage execs can breathe a little easier: reports from previews of Cirque du Soleil’s new, Beatles-themed show, Love, have been across-the-board raves.