The wow factor
These days, entertainment in Las Vegas is less about showgirls in feather boas and more about musical productions designed to take your breath away
Goodbye showgirls, hello sophisticated entertainment for all the family. Las Vegas, party capital of the world, has come of age, and visitors are reaping the benefits with more choice than ever before
IT’S A STRANGE state of affairs when a prop is more famous than the stars of a show, but then Phantom of the Opera is no ordinary show and the chandelier designed for its Las Vegas incarnation is no ordinary light fitting. It’s a vast confection, a whole ton of hand-strung crystals costing a cool £2.5m. No wonder it has become the talk of Nevada since it made its debut at the Venetian Hotel and Casino in June.
It took a staggering £40m to adapt Phantom for the resort’s very particular audience – mainly relentless thrill seekers with a short attention span, according to casino operators. And it’s far from the only stage musical to seriously challenge the modern circuses that ousted the showgirl revues in the 1990s and ruled the local scene for more than a decade. The millennium marked a serious Broadway-West End invasion, and now The Producers and Spamalot are preparing to knock ’em dead in Vegas while Mamma Mia! celebrated its fourth anniversary in February.
It all represents a seismic shift of emphasis in a resort where entertainment generates more than £1bn a year. The importance of offering a broader choice of nightlife is understandable when the financial health of Las Vegas depends on attracting sophisticates, families and non-gamblers as well as the slot-machine crowd. It must therefore compete with everything a world-class city break can offer. Hence the arrival in the desert of five-star celebrity chefs, classy boutique hotels, the Guggenheim Museum and now some of the biggest shows ever to play on an English-speaking stage.
Many are über-hot tickets. Spamalot, for example, was sold out months prior to its opening in London. All the same, while pre-sales for Eric Idle’s Pythonesque comedy are expected to be brisk in Vegas too, unlike in London or New York there should be no question of a resort visitor not being able to get into the show of their choice at a day’s notice. For one thing, the theatres are bigger – typically 1,800 seats – and with 10 shows a week instead of the usual seven, there’s plenty of room for all.
So why would Brits want to see a show they could catch in London rather than one of the showgirl spectaculars for which Las Vegas is uniquely famous? That’s a no-brainer. Not only have showgirls more or less had their day but the musicals are adapted for Las Vegas to give a thrilling event that in sheer spectacle easily upstages the parent performances in London and New York. Plus there’s the fact that in this 24-hour resort there are never any worries about parking or missing dinner after the show – you can even take a drink to your seat. It’s theatre without tears for a similar price to home.
But the thrill is the main thing, which leads us back to that chandelier, whose spectacular crash – an apparent 45-foot freefall in three seconds flat – eclipses anything Phantom fans have seen before. “You can only see this particular show in Las Vegas,” explains Scott Zeiger, whose company, Base Entertainment, has invested nearly £20m in the production – almost as much as the Venetian Hotel invested in its purpose-built home. “We are delivering an intense dramatic experience that will surprise even the 80 million people who’ve already seen the show.”
He adds: “It’s not just about fancy tricks. A vast 80-foot by 125-foot stage, which you could never find in New York or London, helps realise the illusion of transporting the audience back to 19th-century Paris on a grandiose scale that hasn’t been possible before.”
This is the reasoning behind the fabulous fake audience – another unique aspect. Dozens of lifelike mannequins in period costume perch in opera boxes around the real theatre-goers, putting them at the heart of the action. No wonder Andrew Lloyd Webber declared Las Vegas’s Phantom “a dream come true”.
The close involvement of Lloyd Webber was to ensure no loss of vital content in shortening the show to 90 minutes, the typical showtime preferred by operators of casinos. Their aim is to keep the punters out in the gaming rooms, restaurants and clubs for as long as possible. But it seems there is no need to kow-tow to these demands to ensure success: Mamma Mia! is the longest-running show ever to play the resort in its original form and has just celebrated its fourth anniversary.
“We were asked to go down to 90 minutes, but we refused,” explains the show’s worldwide executive producer, Nina Lannan. “We also resisted any temptation to glitz it up for a different audience. We felt such a feelgood show was a natural for Las Vegas just as it was – and we’ve been proved right.”
But she doesn’t deny having taken advantage of the deep pockets at Mandalay Bay, the show’s base. “The moon is a very important prop in the show and we had always dreamed of having one rise above the stage as the action takes place, but this was impossible to achieve in a conventional theatre.”
With this artificial moon measuring nearly 20 feet across, you can see why, but it was no deterrent to the expert technicians who realise Las Vegas spectaculars. They have years of experience on the deepest, widest and most versatile stages in the world. “In Las Vegas alone our moon does rise,” says Lannan. “Maybe it’s one reason why no one leaves our show in the intermission, which we originally feared.”
What fancy, only-in-Vegas tricks the stagers of Spamalot and The Producers have up their sleeves is a closely guarded secret. Spamalot bears a particularly heavy burden: it opens in the £21m Wynn Theatre, built for the adult puppet show Avenue Q, which failed to draw visitors and closed earlier this year.
This must have been a blow to the pride, as well as pocket, of the establishment’s owner, Steve Wynn. He’s credited with single-handedly bringing sophistication to Las Vegas in the 1990s with an audacious vision for taking the resort upmarket. He put Picassos and dancing fountains into the Bellagio, alongside a caviar restaurant and piano bar.
He was also the only hotelier in the 1990s prepared to give a chance to quirky foreign intruders Cirque du Soleil. Now, with five different shows up and running, Cirque must be considered the all-time king of Las Vegas entertainment. “They came along at a time when the traditional feather shows were looking outdated and the Strip was bankrupt of new ideas – they filled a gap for a family show with the wow factor,” explains Las Vegas Review-Journal entertainment reporter Mike Weatherford.
Jerry Nadal, general manager of Cirque du Soleil’s Resident Shows Division, has his own theory. “The success of Cirque is due to several factors.
There’s the language neutral concept [that you can come from any country and not have to worry about language barriers] and the spectacular, only-seen-in-Vegas factor. Each show is bigger than the last and allows audiences to use their own imagination, so viewing becomes a very personal experience.”
In spite of its successes, even Cirque had teething problems with its more adult-oriented show Zumanity. And what if a bunch of clever producers and choreographers should revamp the old feather shows for the 21st century, trumping both modern circus and branded stage shows? “I’d hate to see Las Vegas abandon its old charms entirely for Broadway hits,” says Weatherford, who claims inside knowledge that just such a revamp is on the drawing-board, probably destined for the Aladdin, with one of Vegas’s top choreographers behind it. In which case, we can probably look forward to a bionic showgirl balancing a two-ton chandelier on her head.
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HOT TICKETS
- PHANTOM is playing at the Venetian, +1 866 641 7469; www.venetian.tickets.com (£42-£82) [25a0] MAMMA MIA! is playing at Mandalay Bay, +1 702 632 7580; www..mandalaybay.com (£25-£57)
- THE PRODUCERS opened in February at Paris Las Vegas, +1 888 727 4758; www.harrahs.com (£39-£74)
- SPAMALOT opens this month at the Wynn, www..montypython spamalot.com
- CIRQUE DU SOLEIL productions (all tickets available at www..cirquedusoleil.com) are playing Mystere at Treasure Island, +1 702 796 9999 (£31-£49), O at the Bellagio, +1 702 796 9999 (£51-£78), Ka at MGM Grand, +1 702 796 9999 (£51-£78), Zumanity at New York New York, +1 702 740 6815 (Friday through Tuesday, £34-£65), Love at The Mirage – a tribute to the Beatles, +1 702 792 7777 (£36-£78)
Words: Anthea Gerrie
All Phantom of the Opera photography: Joan Marcus
