The pirate flag over Treasure Island is about to fly for a different kind of treasure story. MANA — The Polynesian Revue & Luau: The Final Journey of Robert Louis Stevenson will perform its next show on Friday, October 23 at Treasure Island Las Vegas, with monthly performances continuing through December 2026, according to a GlobeNewswire release issued October 19 by KnokX Pro Entertainment.
Organizers bill MANA as the only Polynesian luau-and-live-revue production on the Las Vegas Strip — a claim Previously is attributing to the organizers, as is proper for a superlative in a town that invents a new “only” every season. What is not in dispute is the shape of the evening: Polynesian dance, live music, theatrical storytelling and cinematic projection inside the Treasure Island ballroom, paired with a full Polynesian feast. It is dinner theater in the classic Las Vegas sense, rebuilt around a story with genuine literary bones.
The story: a novelist’s last voyage
The production tells the story of Robert Louis Stevenson — the Scottish author of Treasure Island — and his travels through the South Pacific: Tahiti, Hawaii, New Zealand and Samoa, where he made his home and where he was laid to rest atop Mount Vaea. For Las Vegas audiences, the hook is hiding in plain sight. The resort hosting the show takes its name and its identity from Stevenson’s most famous book. MANA closes that circle, staging the author’s own final journey in a ballroom a short walk from the pirate ships.
Stevenson’s biography earns the theatrical treatment on its own merits. Born in Edinburgh in 1850, chronically ill for most of his life, he wrote Treasure Island in the early 1880s — published in book form in 1883 — and followed it with Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, becoming one of the most widely read authors in the English language while still a young man. In 1888 he set out across the Pacific, partly in search of a climate his health could survive, and the voyage became the defining chapter of his life.
He traveled through the Marquesas and Tahiti, spent time in Hawaii and New Zealand, and in 1890 settled in Samoa, building a home at Vailima, near Apia. Samoans gave him the name Tusitala — “teller of tales” — and he became a genuine participant in island life, writing about the Pacific not as a passing tourist but as a resident who had chosen it. He died in Samoa in 1894, at just 44, and was buried, as he had wished, on the summit of Mount Vaea, overlooking the ocean. His requiem, which he wrote himself, is carved there: home is the sailor, home from the sea.
The show: dance, music, projection and a feast
According to the organizers, MANA presents Stevenson’s journey through Polynesian dance, music and theatrical storytelling, with cinematic projection carrying audiences between islands. That structure makes sense for the material: Stevenson’s Pacific years were a sequence of arrivals — new islands, new communities, new stories — and a revue format, moving in dances and musical numbers rather than straight dramatic scenes, can travel the way he traveled.
The luau is not an add-on; it is half the billing. The release promises a full Polynesian feast served with the performance, which puts MANA in a proud Las Vegas tradition. This city practically invented the idea that a show should come with dinner, from the old supper-club floorshows to today’s residency-and-tasting-menu packages. A luau revue with a real feast is both a night out and a meal, priced as one decision — though on that point, readers should note the release did not include ticket prices or showtimes, and Previously is not going to invent them. Check Treasure Island and KnokX Pro Entertainment for current ticket information before you plan the night.
The creator, and what he says it’s for
MANA was created by Fonoti Reno Anoa’i and is presented by KnokX Pro Entertainment. In the release, Anoa’i explains the impulse behind the production in terms that go well beyond filling a ballroom calendar:
“I wanted to create something our community could see themselves in while welcoming others into the experience.”
— Fonoti Reno Anoa’i, creator of MANA, in the KnokX Pro Entertainment announcement
That sentence is the show’s whole argument. Las Vegas has a large and deep-rooted Pacific Islander community — the city is sometimes called the “ninth island” by Native Hawaiians, a nickname earned over decades of migration — and Polynesian culture here is not a theme, it is a population. A Strip production built by a Polynesian creator, telling a story that crosses Polynesia with respect for the people who received Stevenson, speaks to locals first and invites visitors in second. That ordering is exactly what Anoa’i describes.
Why Treasure Island, why now
The venue fit deserves a moment. Treasure Island opened on the Strip in 1993 with a pirate identity drawn straight from Stevenson’s novel — the lagoon, the ships, the whole romantic apparatus of buried gold. Over the years the resort has softened the pirate theme, but the name on the tower never changed. Hosting a revue about the actual Robert Louis Stevenson — not Long John Silver, but the real man who wrote the book, sailed the Pacific and died in Samoa — gives the property a story with more depth than a stage battle ever had, and gives the show a home whose name is its own best advertisement.
The timing fits the Strip’s current moment, too. Las Vegas entertainment is in a phase of smaller-room, story-driven productions sitting alongside the mega-residencies — shows that can fill a ballroom completely, run monthly, and build an audience by word of mouth. MANA’s schedule, monthly performances through December 2026, follows exactly that model: October 23 first, then a monthly cadence into the holidays, when a warm, feast-centered night out plays especially well against the desert’s coldest weeks. More of the city’s entertainment and Strip coverage lives on the Previously news front, and the week’s local outlook is in our Las Vegas week ahead.
If you go
The next performance is Friday, October 23 at Treasure Island Las Vegas, in the resort’s ballroom, with monthly shows through December 2026. The production is MANA — The Polynesian Revue & Luau: The Final Journey of Robert Louis Stevenson, created by Fonoti Reno Anoa’i and presented by KnokX Pro Entertainment. The release announcing the run did not publish ticket prices or doors and show times, so confirm those details directly with Treasure Island or KnokX Pro Entertainment before heading to the Strip — and if the feast matters to your party, ask what the evening’s menu includes when you book.
Come for the premise, which is genuinely good: the man who invented the treasure map, retold through the cultures of the islands where he chose to live and die, in the one casino on Earth named after his book. Las Vegas does a lot of things loudly. Once in a while, it does one thoughtfully.
Sources: KnokX Pro Entertainment announcement via GlobeNewswire, October 19, 2026. Stevenson biographical details are the well-established public record.
