To hear the story being told, Robert Ferrara didn't exactly believe that the phone call he received that November afternoon in 2003 was real. A client, McLaren Engineering, was calling his hydraulics distributorship, Atlantic Industrial Technologies, and asking him and his team to help design the "job of the century" for a Cirque du Soleil show, called KA, at the MGM Grand hotel and casino in Las Vegas. KA, according to MGM Grand, is an unprecedented theatrical show that combines acrobatic performances, martial arts, puppetry, multimedia and pyrotechnics to illustrate the nature of duality. The story follows two separated twins, on an adventure to fulfill their destinies.

"We'd done that kind of work on Broadway," says Ferrara, president of the Long Island, N.Y.—based company. "McLaren Engineering knew our name from previous work in the industry, and asked us to come up to their office and visit them to talk about the show. I left the meeting as a skeptic because the specifications of the project seemed to defy the laws of physics."

It wouldn't be much of a story if the meeting didn't go anywhere, so it should satisfy to know that there is a happy ending: Atlantic was awarded the contract, and Ferrara and his brother, company vice president, Tom, spent the last year shuttling back and forth from New York to Las Vegas. The project, spearheaded by McLaren, opened to the public Feb. 3, 2005.

"The creativity involved was mind boggling, and the resources Cirque du Soleil and MGM had available for the show were amazing," says Ferrara. "The producers wanted not only a safe show for the performers, but a show that would blow audiences away."

Tom recalls his brother's reaction after the meeting. "Bob was amazed at the scope of the project," he says. "He didn't take a traditional sales approach with them, but instead gave them an educational presentation in detail. They're all engineers so they appreciated the detail Bob went into."

The Ferrara brothers spent half of those 14 months in Las Vegas designing and creating the hydraulics to bring the stage to life for the show.

"MGM said they'd give us two weeks to get this job commissioned," says Tom. "They were a bit off. It took six months to get it where we wanted it."

Cirque du Soleil and MGM wanted a stage that, as its first requirement, could move its 150-ton physique two feet per second. Here's the best part: the stage is buried at the beginning of the show, and during the show lifts up to 70 feet in the air, then tilts to 100 degrees and more, and it then spins. Performers grab onto and move among pegs embedded in the stage. All this is done gracefully and smoothly, of course, since this is a Cirque show.

No small shopping list of products was required for this job. Atlantic's responsibility was to supply the hydraulics capable of 6,000 horsepower, and all the motion control with the hydraulics and systems to make a stage that weighs as much as an airplane fly 70 feet into the air.

"We had miles of cable that needed to be installed properly, and it was a day-to-day job to fix each little problem," says Tom. "Add to that the special meetings about safety, entertaining each scenario, because the artists' safety is paramount, and the pressure of knowing that MGM was foregoing $400,000 a day in revenue waiting for the show to start."

Parker Hannifin was the supplier that Bob and Tom tapped to take this ride with their company, with Bob even inviting their Parker Hannifin manager along on the initial meeting.

Peter Domenichello, Bob's partner at the meeting, is the hydraulic territory manager for Parker Hannifin's Industrial Hydraulics Group, a division of the parent company, a motion and control manufacturer of systems and components.

"We work with Atlantic closely, and we were called on by Bob and McLaren for this job, specifically because of our custom cylinders, but also because they knew that Parker would step in and support all its components," says Domenichello. "We are business partners, and all our products are sold through Atlantic, but the two companies just work well together."

Atlantic Industrial was founded by the Ferraras' father, Charles, in 1983 with a partner with whom he had left a similar company. Charles started his new company from the den in his home, with the garage serving as the warehouse. His partner was the salesman, his wife worked as the receptionist, and they marketed one line of air valves.

The first year, sales came in between $50,000 and $100,000, and neither partner was able to pull a salary. The distributorship grew, and when Bob, the eldest Ferrara child, joined the company in 1986, Charles bought out his partner.

Both Tom and Bob started working at Atlantic in the shipping and receiving department, after having a job out in the "real world," Bob says. Bob currently is the leading force in sales and projects at the company, while Tom, who joined the company in 1989, is chief engineer.

Bob and Tom bought the company from Charles in 1999.

Services offered at the distributorship include inside sales for hoses and valves, and some general fluid power, but now the sales staff chases projects more than anything else.

"From day one, we've been an engineering-based fluid power distributor," says Bob. "We are not a box mover, nor a super warehouse. Engineered projects are what this company is about."

Having experienced steady but slow growth over the years, Atlantic was, in the mid-1980s, about to enter into the industry that would become its niche: stage automation. But it was in the early '90s when Atlantic's star really rose on Broadway.

The company was approached to do some work for The Lion King show in New York, coordinating the hydraulics for the Pride Rock piece, and was eventually signed on for the production's seven road shows.

"We've done a lot of shows since, with all kinds of hydraulic needs," says Bob, "such as Billy Joel's Movin' Out and Man of La Mancha. We even did work in an opera house in Taiwan."

It is that kind of work and the growing name recognition in the business that brought Cirque du Soleil to Atlantic as well.

"We do other work in many other industries, also," says Tom. "We design and manufacture the hydraulics and controls for chocolate chip machines, for example, and have found a niche for ourselves in bridge and drawbridge hydraulic retrofits."

Adds Bob, "We've seen the industrial base diminishing in the Northeast, and have begun to focus more on entertainment and civil engineering."

Both brothers take pride in their company's niche markets, saying that they'll be digging deeper into those niches as time goes on, as markets such as drawbridge reconstruction and stage production can't be serviced by just any regular fluid power distributor.

"People in entertainment want to go with the tried and true," says Tom, "and we've been promoting that as our focus. As a result, we're getting more interest and seeing more large-scale projects coming our way."

Currently, Atlantic has product in more than a dozen running shows, and has designed the hydraulics to make the car fly over the audience for the Broadway production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which opens this April.

The lights went up on KA in Las Vegas, artists performed, and the audience cheered. It was Opening Night of the preview performances, and Bob and Tom Ferrara were in attendance with their father, Charles, and their mother. The show, and its custom-built stage, ran to perfection.

"It was a proud moment, I think, for our dad," says Tom. "He'd never been involved in anything this big. And for the company he started in his den to make a stage that received a standing ovation...it was very special."