One Actress's Views of The Lion King

On this week's podcast, we have a brief interview with former Mamma Mia! star Carol Linnea Johnson about her band, the Hot Club of Las Vegas. But I also thought this exchange, which is on the audio, is interesting as we continue to debate whether The Lion King, which replaced MM!, is a good Vegas idea.

CLJ: Ultimately, it is a cartoon. People like to say, ‘Well The Lion King is Hamlet.’ And I say, well, you know, a dead father, a vengeful stepfather… but it’s not Hamlet. It’s a cartoon. And it’s beautifully realized but it’s a cartoon. It’ll be interesting to see if it’s able to corner a family market maybe that no other show does.

TheStripPodcast: But it’s not your expectation that it’s going to play to adults necessarily? I mean, it’ll play to adults bringing children, but…

CLJ: Well, they’ll love it. But I doubt really highly that if you’re going to spend $250 on tickets for something and you’re going to take a date, the Lion King might not be your first choice.

TheStripPodcast: Meow!

CLJ: Hey, who knows, maybe it’s hot! Maybe it’s all those gorgeous singers and hot bodies dancing as gazelles might really be the thing. It might be the new hot date ticket!

You can hear the entire 8-minute discussion starting at around minute-marker 59 on this week's episode.

This Week's LVW Col: One Hot Mamma!

Here's this week's heartfelt LVW "Strip Sense" column on, yes, the MM! closing. Hope you like it.

One hot 'Mamma'!

Honoring an often-mocked, but ultra-entertaining, Vegas production as it says goodbye

By STEVE FRIESS

There is a nasty rumor going around that as the last numbers began to swell through the Mandalay Bay Theater on Sunday at the final performance of Mamma Mia!, I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket to dab away some precipitation flowing from my eyes. I would like to inform everyone that I had spent the entire weekend laid up with a head cold, and there could be other explanations for why a hard-bitten journalist would need a Kleenex to regain his composure.

If that’s a non-denial denial, then it probably comes from the fact that I am in some sort of bizarre disbelief over the fact that this show is finit, that there will be no further chances to link up on the Strip with Donna and Sophie, Sophie’s three possible dads and a cast that somehow managed to make a decades-old catalog of ABBA songs into a meaningful soundtrack for my current, 21st-century life. I mean, here I am at 4 a.m. feeling the need to write about it when another perfectly good column for this week has already been in the can for days.

But, yes, it is true that I am a bit at bay. For some reason I don’t quite comprehend—it was still making money, damn you!—Mamma Mia! is gone, its last “Waterloo” gloriously and gratuitously belted by actors in bright spandex performing at the end, concert-style, the one song everyone needed to hear but nobody could figure out how to weave into the story.

I don’t often attend closings in Las Vegas, but then again the shows I love this much don’t tend either to last long enough to merit a closing of any emotional heft (Avenue Q, Madhattan) or to ever close (Mystère, Kà, Love). Siegfried & Roy never got a proper send-off, of course, because it went down amid tragedy and controversy; Wayne Newton leaves but always comes back; and I probably would’ve attended the finale of Céline Dion’s … A New Day if I hadn’t been out of town, but it wouldn’t have been the same.

And why not? Well, for one thing, I don’t worry about Céline Dion. She’s Céline Dion. She came, she conquered, she left in a shower of roses and plaudits and celebrity audience members, a red carpet and a new album and a world tour before her, not to mention a standing offer to resume making megabucks for Caesars and AEG Live whenever she deigns to return. The show-biz universe may have been skeptical at the onset that she could fill 4,000 seats a night for all those years, but she proved those skeptics wrong within the first few weeks and never looked back. Plus, if she needed a bump, she could always show up on Larry King Live.

No such luck for Mamma Mia!, which required constant love and attention to keep it noticed amid the cacophony of only-in-Vegas offerings that barrage visitors from the minute they book their rooms to the eons it takes to collect checked baggage at the airport. (As I write that, I wonder: Is there a deal with the resorts to move luggage slowly at McCarran to give advertisers around those carousels their money’s worth with a captive audience?)

Sure, the show was always mentioned—and always shall be, given its historic success—in stories about Broadway coming to the Boulevard. And it does receive due credit for having kicked off a more successful but less often noticed trend, the modern-day respect and interest by Vegas resorts in catering to female tourists after decades of this being strictly a hetero male’s fantasyland.

Yet, if Céline departed as a head of state would, Mamma Mia! went out the way it always operated.

Read the rest HERE

The Show is UP: Mamma Mia! Exit Interviews

This show was a helluva lot of fun to do. Those of you who missed the live version will have to wait till the annual August outtakes episode to hear me explode in a cursing fury at the &$*holes who do the show after us for talking loudly in the next room while we were in our closing minutes. It wasn't the first time and I was in no mood. But, hey, that's the kind of thing the live crew gets. But the podcast version is still great and you can hear it by clicking on the date below or right-click to download it and listen whenever you want. Or subscribe via iTunes here or via Zune here.

Jan. 8: Mamma Mia! Exit Interviews

The skeptics – including Steve -- said it would never work. A two-act, full-length musical scored by decades-old pop songs telling a convoluted story about parenthood and spandex could never, possibly succeed in Las Vegas. But succeed “Mamma Mia!” did, emboldening another half-dozen or so musicals to believe they, too, were Strip-worthy, only to find out that what Mamma Mia did so effortlessly was actually quite a feat. But all good things must come to an end, and on Sunday, Mandalay Bay said goodbye to Donna, Sophie, her three possible dads and the rest of the cast. We, however, aren’t done yet. Tonight we have live in the studio Brad Grey and Tim Tucker, the only two actors who stayed with the show for its entire, record-breaking Las Vegas run.

In Banter: New Year's Eve fireworks sucked, CityCenter's hiring, Stratosphere's laying off, The Harmon's in limbo, Tamara's stalled and Paris' empty showroom is a blessing.

Links:

See Tim Tucker's website here
Hear Steve euologize Mamma Mia! on KNPR by clicking here
See more on CityCenter's Harmon stall here
See rants from Fox viewers about the lousy NYE fireworks here
See the last blog post about Tamara at Venetian, now stalled, here
See more about Stratosphere's restaurant woes here

The Strip is LIVE tonight with Mamma Mia! Alums!

We're live tonight to record this week's "The Strip" with two guests in-studio, Bradley Gray (left) and Tim Tucker (right), the only two members of the Mamma Mia! cast to remain with the show throughout its entire six-year run. Plus, news from Vegas and all the other cool stuff we do.

Join us starting at 6:45 p.m. PT for the live show and chat with other listeners at LVRocks.Com or wait until Thursday for the podcast. Your call.

Bye, Bye, Mamma Mia!

And so the most successful Broadway musical ever to come to Las Vegas closed last night with an excellent final performance in which the actors clearly were trying to control their emotions and get the job done. I snapped these above from the 15th row and was amazed at how well they came out. (Read my "Mamma Mia" Mea Culpa here, btw.)

They didn't make any statements at the end of the production, much to the disappointment of many in the audience, but there were some moments during the show when it the actors and actresses behind the roles seemed to be winking at us about the occasion.

They did, however, have a party. Of course. This time, it was up in the HoB Foundation Room.




Here's a pic that a friend shot of me. I know it's unflattering, but I'm sick and bloated from all those chocolate Santas that were supposed to ward off this cold, so...


I really wasn't feeling like sticking around, but I loved the show so much and I really wanted to see Tina Walsh, the original Donna in the Vegas production who is now Madame Giry in Phantom. She made it over after her show was over. (To bone up on why I'm so mad about Tina, read this old LVW col.)

Here she is with Carol Linnea Johnson, who closed the show in the role that Meryl Streep ruined.


Here's Tina being chatted up by Robin Leach and then posing with Tim Tucker, one of our two guests on "The Strip" this Tuesday night.



And here's a few of the other actors. First, there's Victor Wallace, who opened the show in Vegas as Skye, the boyfriend of Sophie, and later returned to the cast as Sam, one of Sophie's possible dads. Yes, in a six-year span.


And here's Robin Baxter, who played Rosie, one of Donna's two friends. She's very, very funny.


But, alas, the party must come to an end. I was reminded of this when I saw this...


...in the Mandalay Bay parking garage.

Good luck to the former cast. And thanks for a great ride.

My 'Mamma Mia!' Mea Culpa

I've finally caught Miles' dreadful cold -- this is Day 3, which evidently is Hock Big Green Loogies Day -- but I'm going to soldier on tonight and get over to the finale of Mamma Mia! at Mandalay Bay.

In honor of that closure, allow me a Mamma Mia! mea culpa of sorts. At the media opening for the show in 2003, uberpublicist Dave Kirvin walked up behind me and said, gamely, "'One Hot Mamma'...question mark? How about 'One Hot Mamma'...exclamation point?" He was referring to this:


That's the headline for my Newsweek piece published six years ago next week about Vegas' first big swerve towards musical theater. You can read it by clicking here.

Kirvin, always genial, was needling me about the doubt engendered in that headline. I, of course, hid behind the fact that I don't write headlines, and the piece itself was a balanced -- and really short -- look at the fact that Mamma Mia! was going against established Vegas norms, that there was nothing in Vegas show history to say that it would.

Well, we all know now how that turned out. Mike Weatherford has an interesting tribute in today's Review-Journal in which he says that the ABBA-scored show was never a Cirque-like hit but marched on triumphantly week after week, month after month, emboldening all the other Broadway fare that arrived thereafter to fancy itself Strip material.

If I regret anything, it's that I failed to understand for a very long time the real emotional pull of what I referred to in that Newsweek piece as a "plot [that] is easy to ignore." The more times I've seen this show, the more numbers in it have affected me. "Knowing You, Knowing Me" reduced me to tears during the period after the end of my first marriage. "Slipping Through My Fingers" is poignant to me now as my Little Brother, once 6 and now somehow 18?!?, ships off to Air Force boot camp in three weeks. And "Winner Takes It All," before being utterly destroyed in the cinema by Meryl Streep, made me comprehend what a Sarah Brightman-caliber treasure Las Vegas had in Tina Walsh, the original Vegas Donna who now plays Madame Giry in "Phantom."

So, Mr. Kirvin and the rest of you, congratulations and, of course, thank you for the music. And to my readers, I do hope you'll join us on "The Strip" on Tuesday night at LVRocks.Com for a live interview with the only two members of the "Mamma Mia!' company who made it through the whole six-year run.

This Week's LVW Col: The Lion King

Here's this week's Las Vegas Weekly column, the first of at least two based on my NYC trip in December. Happy New Year's Eve everyone!

Can You Feel The Length Tonight?

The Lion King has a shot at success here - but its running time could kill it

By STEVE FRIESS

My 9-year-old niece sat next to me at the Minskoff Theatre in New York City, utterly enthralled. Her widened eyes were glued to the visual feast before her, the mammoth puppets and the ebullient, multiethnic cast performing colorful, energetic song-and-dance numbers, the Elton John/Tim Rice score.

A few seats away from her, though, was a slightly different story. A middle-aged couple from Ohio watched at first attentively and then, as time went on, with some impatience. The woman, in fact, dug out her program and opened it to the page with the list of songs, trying to catch a little bit of light so she could figure out how many were left. I had made her acquaintance before the show started because she complimented my niece on her outfit, and so at intermission I wondered how she liked the show.

“Oh, it’s wonderful,” she said, “but maybe a little bit too long for me.”

The show, of course, was The Lion King, the production that aspires to be Las Vegas’ Next Big Thing when it arrives this spring at the Mandalay Bay. Along with the Cirque du Soleil Elvis-scored show coming to CityCenter, The Lion King is one of only two major entertainment premieres now on the 2009 calendar for the Strip. (Okay, there’s three if you’re willing to count that Scary Spice stripper show coming to the Planet Hollywood, but I’m not.)

Whenever a Broadway show is heading to Vegas, I like to get out and see it in its native habitat, New York. That way, I have a baseline to compare the quality of the performances and changes in the staging of the Vegas edition when it arrives.

And, of course, I get to begin to judge whether it’s going to succeed or fail in Las Vegas.

Read the rest HERE

Mamma Mia, Trump and WSOP

Sorry I've been quiet today, but it's been a bit of a busy morning writing my next Las Vegas Weekly column and filing a piece for tomorrow's New York Times on the renewed Steve Fossett search before heading to lunch at BLT Burger at Mirage.

I'm at the Rio right now for the World Series of Poker -- the last 27 are being whittled down to the so-called November Nine today. So, since I don't actually have to spring into intense action until we get closer to that -- and there are 18 of the 6,844 players left, I have a breath.

I'll discuss BLT Burger on this week's episode of "The Strip" this week but suffice to say it was a very pleasant surprise. And yesterday's visit to the Trump is the subject of a slightly admiring but largely scathing LVW column to come, so I'll hold my fire on that until Thursday with perhaps some preview on the show as well.

Which leaves all I have to discuss right now is the preview I attended yesterday of the "Mamma Mia!" film yesterday. And girls, y'all better get out that pack of wild horses you used to drag your men to "Sex and the City" last month if you want to go in pairs to see this. Even more than SATC: The Movie, MM!: The Movie is nothing but eye and ear candy for the ladies and, happily for me, the boys-who-like-boys crowd. Dominic Cooper, the actor who plays Sky, in particular, is a young, beefier Adrian Grenier who does entire numbers with the camera lovingly panning over his immaculate physique. Read all about him from the San Francisco Chronicle here. He's like a Mario Lopez who can act.

The local MM! cast attended and they all were effusive. I imagine that's partly because the movie provides a three-dimensional view of what, on stage, is essentially two dimensional. And they were very respectful of Meryl Streep as Donna Sheridan in the flick even though it was clear she did not do justice to many of the more difficult singing moments -- particularly "Winner Takes It All," which is the emotional core of the entire show.

Ultimately this was a very campy, very sexy, very expensive version of the show with Streep sort of saying to the audience: "I'm Meryl Streep, I'm going to have fun playing this role and you're invited to come along on the ride with me." It is a lot of fun, if you're into that sort of thing.

Mamma Mia Spoofs Cirque - Very Funny

I hoped to play this audio on "The Strip" next week, but I don't think it's clear enough for that. So instead, here's a reasonably good quality YouTube video of the uproarious number performed by cast members of "Mamma Mia!" in Vegas during the annual "Ribbon of Life" show at Paris last weekend. The show raised $300,000+ for the HIV/AIDS charity Golden Rainbow; it's my favorite charity so and, if you enjoy this, I urge you to drop them a few bucks by clicking here.

The lyrics are below the video. All are courtesy of Greg Kata, a Mamma Mia performer who wrote and directed the number. The background here is that MM is due to close this winter after six years.




"You Gotta Get a Cirque Show"

(We hear the following in blackout)

See that girl...
Watch that scene...
Diggin’ the Dancing Queen!

A voiceover says the following:
"After almost six great years at Mandalay Bay, Mamma Mia!'s reign as the Dancing Queen of Broadway Shows in Vegas has come to an end. MGM plans to occupy the theatre with a brand new spectacular from Cirque du Soleil featuring the music of none other than BRITNEY SPEARS!"

(The curtain rises on an audition. We see several Mamma Mia! Cast Members talking about the fate of Broadway in Vegas)

VOICE 1: I can’t believe the show closed.

VOICE 2: I know. What are your plans?

VOICE 3: Well I want to stay in town. But Broadway shows don’t work here.

VOICE 4: I don’t get it. Avenue Q, Hairspray, The Producers, Spamalot...they all won the Tony for Best Musical and barely lasted a year here in Vegas.

VOICE 5: And don’t forget about We Will Rock You and Saturday Night Fever.

VOICE 6: Can we though?

VOICE 7: And now Mamma Mia! I can’t go back to waiting tables.

VOICE 8: I know. I only came to this audition because the thought of going back to retail makes me want to vomit.

VOICE 9: Look at all this talent though...there’s gotta be a job for us somewhere in Vegas!

From USL a woman clad in a skintight unitard has been eavesdropping on the previous conversation. She turns to the group and addresses them:

ROBIN: Take it from me honey. If you want to work in Vegas, all you need is talent!

CAROL: You’ll pardon me, but having talent is not enough. What you need is a show that’s gonna make your talent special.
“You Gotta Get a Cirque Show”
Sung to the tune of You Gotta Get a Gimmick

CAROL:
You can belt half your face off
Do a scene from Chekhov
Dance ‘til your feet are worn down
But you gotta get a Cirque Show
If you want to stay in town!!!

You can write a little ditty
Improv at Second City
Dress up like Madonna in drag
But you gotta get a Cirque show
If you don’t want to die a hag!

You can sing, you can dance, you can “sort of” act
Vegas don’t give a shit!
So I sing, and I dance, and I really act
But I do it in a split!!!

She then does a really bad split / acro combination

I headlined MAMMA MIA!
Then MGM said “See Ya!”
Broadway West’s a thing of the past
So get yourself a Cirque Show
And your career can really last!

A man who has also been overhearing this conversation enters the stage. He is wearing only a Speedo and possibly some goggles.

RON:
She can sing, she can dance, she can sometimes act
She’s a real Triple Threat
Me I sing, and I dance, and I try to act
But I do it when I’m wet!!!

He pours a bottle of water on himself and tries very unsuccessfully to do synchronized swimming

I can fill a Speedo
Swimming nightly at “O”
So what if chlorine killed all my hair?
‘Cuz if you get a Cirque show
Girl, you’ll never have a care!!!
Robin, who has been patiently waiting her turn, interrupts. She is wearing a sequined leotard and tights.

ROBIN:
They can sing, they can dance, Lord knows they both can’t act!
That won’t buy you milk.
I don’t sing, I don’t dance, I don’t even act.
But I rock out on the silks!

The silks lower from the grid. She attempts to fly, but its obvious she does not have the strength. Eventually, the silks “break” and fall to the floor.

So I can’t get off the ground yet
It beats wearing a hair-net
And serving tourists burgers and fries!!!
Go and get a Cirque show
If it takes a hundred tries!!!

CAROL/RON/ROBIN and CHORUS:

Come join the circus
They’ve got jobs in surplus
Broadway shows won’t make you a star!!!

ALL:
You’re more than just a dumb ho
When you book a Cirque Show
Take a look how different we are!!!

RON:
If you wanna be cool
Dive into a big pool!

ROBIN:
If you wanna rock it
Tear your shoulder from its socket

CAROL:
If you wanna be hip
Learn to do a backflip!!!

ALL:
Get yourself a Cirque Show
And You...Too...
Can Stay EMPLOYED!!!!!!!

Revisiting Manilow, Le Reve, Shark Reef

Hey kids. Miles and I are just now going to sleep after a treacherous travel day from Vegas to Long Island on that trailer park in the sky, Southworst. I didn't realize we were committing to two layovers -- in ABQ then BWI -- and in BWI we had weather problems that grounded us for five hours. Then we got on the plane and sat because, well, in five idle hours they forgot to make sure there was someone on hand to fly the bird. Sheesh. Anyhow, we're here now, will be in NY for a few days seeing some shows and unveiling my late grandfather's headstone, a Jewish year-after custom. So, for now, I leave you with this week's Weekly column about the spree of shows and attractions my niece and I saw last week and my thoughts on revisiting them.

The Manilow Principle

Why some shows are better the second time - and why some are not

By STEVE FRIESS

About 15 minutes into Barry Manilow’s Music & Passion show at the Las Vegas Hilton last week, I received a mocking text message from my partner. Miles had ducked out of having to go with me, my 16-year-old niece, Courtney, and my mother because he had to go to work at the last minute, but he hardly seemed unhappy about that twist of fate.

“So, does it suck yet?” the message taunted.

I missed the message. To my utter shock, I was having much too good a time.

Yes. At Manilow.

But, faithful and puzzled readers might be thinking, didn’t you just a few weeks ago mention how much you despised that very show in that commentary about all that was wrong with the new Cher production?

Indeed, that is why I was so bowled over. When your family visits, you tend to do things you wouldn’t ordinarily want to, and my mother was, is and probably always will be a Fanilow. So off I went, preparing both myself and poor young Courtney to suffer. I prepped the teen for the idea that this would fall into the so-bad-it’s-good category.

Except it wasn’t. It was so good it’s good. Really. In my guidebook, Gay Vegas, I had given this production a “C” and complained that it was a “rush job” with “dancers who seem confused about what they’re doing.” Yet on this night, a good 75 percent of the songs were not in the prior edition, Manilow was unstoppably exuberant and energetic, and even the closing “Copacabana” was less grating and, so it seemed, mercifully a little bit shorter. Also, unlike Bette, Celine or most notably Cher, Manilow remained on the stage for all but about three minutes of the concert. Of course, his “costume changes” involved changing his sportcoat. But still.

This revolution in my thinking led me to a spree of revisiting shows and attractions I hadn’t seen in a long while.

Read the rest HERE

Switzerland: The Las Vegas Spectacular

Here's this week's Las Vegas Weekly column...illustrated! Keep in mind, it was written on Monday. A full week of Swiss travels came after this...


It's a Vegas World: We Just Travel In It
By STEVE FRIESS

As I type, I am in the central-European equivalent of an Econolodge in some quaint southeastern Swiss town called Fribourg on a week’s vacation and anniversary celebration with my partner Miles. The hotel clerk barely spoke enough English for us to get a couple of extra pillows, we spent much of the afternoon lost without a map in the winding countryside between here and the capital, Bern, and my partner’s one true wish at the moment is that someone serve him a drink with some ice cubes.

And yet, as far away as we are from most of our creature comforts and all that’s familiar to us, I am looking out the window and there it is: Las Vegas. Or some derivative thereof.

It must be some cosmic funny, but this room faces the side of the Casino de Fribourg, its name edited into the classic “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign in a way it’s certain Betty Willis never expected. There’s an advertisement for a slot-club card and the promise of “jeux et spectacles,” or games and shows. Heck, they even unintentionally evoke Steve Wynn in the use of the term “le reve,” as in the promise of “the getaway of your dreams.”

We could hardly resist, of course. Okay, we were really hungry, and it seemed like the only place open for dinner when we arrived last night for our two-night stay in these parts. So off we went to the exciting home of “more than 100 slots” and a few table games. When you enter, you show your carefully scrutinized ID, and then you’re encouraged to pick a metal key out of a large red box. If your key opens a nearby door, you win something. Nobody would say what, and nobody won while I stood watching.

We didn’t stay long. We walked around the casino and threw a couple of francs into the machines; they still use coins here, and the machines still gobble your money before you can figure out what represents a win on the same themed five-reel slot games. The booklet about the slot club was especially entertaining; we learned that 300,000 player points earns you a GPS device and upcoming shows here include a Chinese country-western singer and a tribute band that’s “the closest thing to ABBA.”

Then we moved on to the horrid-looking restaurant, where Casino de Fribourg’s Vegas showed in their attempt to gouge for food. The menu was a simplistic offering of meat and pasta, none of which was less than about $25 per entrée. An “offre special Americaine” was a seeming steal at about $28 for a 200-gram ribeye in barbecue sauce, baked potatoes (spelled “backed”) and a veggie medley. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but we’re counting our pennies on this trip, and this place didn’t seem like the occasion to splurge, so we drove over to the McDrive—really, that’s what they call it—for Big Macs instead.

Amusingly, Casino de Fribourg was the second gambling joint we saw that day. The first was Grand Casino Luzern, which loomed over the water at Lake Luzern in central Switzerland.

We tried going in but found that entrance cost 10 Swiss Francs, or about $9, although we would’ve gotten a Lucky 5-Franc token to play with on one of the 245 slots. We had to leave anyway when I tried to shoot a photo into the casino, unaware that this was illegal.

I did grab a couple of matchbooks on my way out. (Oh, and did I mention I also made off from Casino de Fribourg with a little change bucket as a souvenir?)

That wasn’t the end of our Vegas-related thrills. On a public bus, an advertisement pasted in the window shilled for an upcoming performance of a four-female group called The Acapickels and Orchestra Go To Las Vegas. See for yourself at acapickels.ch.

One night in Zurich, a German variety show played on the TV in our restaurant. The first act was the stars of the Berlin production of Mamma Mia! doing “Dancing Queen” in their outlandish finale garb.

And the second? None other than ex-Planet Hollywood star Hans Klok, still running as fast as he can around the stage in flouncy shirts to create the illusion of an exciting magic act. Weirder yet, suddenly Pamela Anderson was onstage with him here, too. Presumably this was recorded back when the two were something of a, uh, Vegas item. The banter was in German, so it was hard to tell.

Nowhere we go are we immune to our hometown influence. Every time we tell new acquaintances where we live, just the utterance of the words “Las Vegas” sends an electric pulse coursing through the room.

My favorite? I went to the Swiss parliament in Bern to interview a prominent legislator for a piece I’m working on during this trip for The New York Times. He was excited to be interviewed by that newspaper, but he became positively delirious when I mentioned I hailed from Vegas.

“Vegas! Oh, I love Las Vegas!” he chirped.

Had he ever been?

“Once, long, long ago.” His French accelerated beyond my comprehension, so a fellow journalist helping to translate explained that the legislator had come to the U.S. on holiday after college. He and his friends bought a $500 junker and circled our land. The highlight, even back in 1985? Vegas. I asked where he stayed.

“The Moulin Rouge,” he replied.

Miles and I weren’t even sure whether that place was open as a hotel in 1985, but the legislator wanted to keep chatting about what a great time he had, to the point that I needed to return the conversation to the business at hand.

It was enough to remind us that if we want a vacation free of Vegas chit-chat, we might be best off staying home.

This week's Weekly column...

February 28, 2008

The Strip Sense: The Return of Tina Walsh
A long, perilous road back to stardom for the Strip veteran

By Steve Friess

My first significant exposure to the Vegas entertainment scene came at opening night of Mamma Mia! at the Mandalay Bay back in the winter of 2003. I knew I had a lot to learn when a spontaneous standing ovation greeted the initial stage appearance of this one particular blond actress, to my utter bafflement. The audience, made up entirely of local media and Vegas insiders, cheered for this woman as though she were the Strip’s equivalent to Sarah Brightman.

I also was not terribly well-schooled in the fine art of ABBA at that point, but I had seen the show in New York a month earlier in advance of a Newsweek item I wrote on whether this Broadway-to-Vegas thing would work. It seemed like a fun, hardly memorable show.

In the hands of this woman who had been regaled, however, it was elevated to an astonishing experience. When she belted out “The Winner Takes It All,” I was smitten. Who, I asked after the show, was that woman?

That, I learned, was the legendary, the delightful Tina Walsh, and my analogy to Sarah Brightman was hardly a stretch. Walsh had one of those uniquely Vegas stories, having come to Nevada as a teenager from Dallas as a showgirl in Jubilee! more than 20 years ago and then having gone on to co-star with Michael Crawford, Tommy Tune and Rick Springfield in the MGM Grand spectacular EFX.

And now, the woman who came to Vegas to get to Broadway had found Broadway had come to her in Vegas. She was the go-to home-grown triple threat, a woman who could sing, dance and act.

What happened next, though, reflects an important unnoticed side of the Broadway tidal wave that crashed ashore here and is now receding. After Mamma Mia! proved itself a hit and other productions announced their Strip plans, the New York-based casting directors largely stopped taking Vegas performers seriously.

Read the rest HERE

R.I.P. Broadway West: We Hardly Knew Ye

Here's this week's column from the Weekly. To hear more discussion of Gill's comments -- including the surprising show Gill believes to be among the most successful in town -- grab this week's episode of "The Strip," which also features a chat with Lance Burton as the magician prepares to return to work Friday at the Monte Carlo. Listen here or right-click here to download the file to hear whenever you want.

R.I.P. Broadway West: We Hardly Knew Ye
By STEVE FRIESS
It’s not as though this ought to come as much of a surprise, I know.
We all saw “Avenue Q” come and go, “Hairspray” come and go, “The Producers” come and go. We saw “Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular” cut back from 10 shows a week to eight. We knew that “Mamma Mia!” is in its final throes, even as it this month celebrated its fifth birthday, impressive by any Vegas measure. And we’ve all heard the rumors that “Spamalot” isn’t long for this street.
But that, my friends, is a far cry from the declaration made by the man most responsible for this decade's Broadway wave in Las Vegas, Michael Gill.
He’s the man with his finger most firmly on the pulse of the Vegas entertainment scene and he’s calling the body.
"If there ever was a Broadway West phenomenon, it’s done,” Gill told me this week. “Jersey Boys will be very successful. But that’s an anomaly and that's it. No casino I know is looking to bring another Broadway show here."

Read the rest HERE

As I Predicted...

...Mamma Mia!, the most successful Broadway show ever in Vegas, is not closing this summer. They've extended it to at least January 2009. Which makes perfect sense. When you've got a blockbuster movie version starring Meryl Streep coming out this year, you kinda want to take advantage of that.

Closing it in 2008 was among my four worst ideas in Vegas, per my Weekly column in November. Glad someone's listening. Or something. Now, about that second Hard Rock Cafe on the Strip...

My Mamma Mia! Review

I'm amazed that I've never opined in anything published online about "Mamma Mia!" but Bay's comments from the "4 Worst Ideas" piece and a couple of emails made me think it might make good sense to post this entry from my guidebook, "Gay Vegas." Buy the book for all your gay Vegas-loving pals for Xmas by clicking here.

Mamma Mia!
At Mandalay Bay
702/632-7580
Sun-Thurs 7:30 pm, Sat 6 and 10 pm
Price: Tickets start at $49.50

BEEFCAKE-O-METER: 9 of 10
OVERALL QUALITY: A

What could be more queer than a ditzy musical scored to ABBA music in which a gaggle of well-toned shirtless studs actually undress the lead male character on stage and slip him into a skimpy spandex wet suit while singing “Lay All Your Love On Me”? There's a story in here somewhere -- something about a young girl trying to figure out who her father is -- but even in that effort a gay surprise awaits her. The only off-key note when one of the female lead’s friends, a likely candidate for lesbianism, instead ends up turning all girly-girl in swooning over the man's-man of male leads.

BREAKING: "Producers" Closes Feb. 9

You heard it here first: "The Producers" will close Feb. 9. An announcement goes out later tonight.

This is not a surprise, seeing how Mel Brooks basically said as much in June on "The Strip" and in my interview for Newsweek. But the other bit of news is that Tony Danza, who has been playing Max Bialystock since late summer, will remain in the gig for the rest of the show's run.

It's unclear whether we can call this a failure if Brooks himself didn't expect it to be more than a one-year run. From what I understand, the show essentially broke even and brought healthy foot traffic into Paris Las Vegas.

With this show gone, we've still got "Spamalot," "Phantom," "Mamma Mia!," "Menopause" and the upcoming "Jersey Boys." But I suspect that the Broadway "experiment" is petering out, and I'm predicting "Spamalot" won't stick around through the end of 2008. (Wynn did say on "The Strip" in September that the royalties to Eric Idle and Mike Nichols eat deep into his profits.) It's hard to imagine what show anyone would go for now given the difficult recent history although the Billy Joel-scored "Movin' Out" certainly has potential for all of the "Mamma Mia!" and "Jersey Boys" reasons.

Two Interesting Pieces of Vegas Show News

Since I'm so quick to point out when something looks like it's not doing well, it seemed only fair to report that "Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular" does seem to be holding its own. Not setting the world on fire, but the cast was called into a meeting recently and told not to worry about some of the lighter crowds. Apparently, according to a source, the show has made money every week it's been here. They're at nine shows a week now but it's likely it'll go down one or two, with the two Sunday shows consolidating because the early one sees the weakest attendance. The cast principles have all been signed to another year, I believe, so they're in it for the long haul. And heck, a Broadway show staying in Vegas for more than a year is now the definition of success unless you're that anomalous phenom known as "Mamma Mia!"

While we're on the topic, an interesting development over at "Lance Burton: Master Magician." For the first time that I know of, a hotel is offering a discount on tickets if you buy them online at their website. At Monte-Carlo.Com, they give you $10 off. I don't know whether this is just a logical innovation nobody had thought of or that Lance is showing signs of wear and tear after so many years of headlining. He sounded good when we spoke to him a couple months ago for "The Strip" Podcast.

You know, I say it's an innovative idea and I mean it. At the same time, though, don't most people buy their show tickets through the show's website? Hmmm... sounds like the making of a new poll!

Spamalittle?

There's some strong evidence that despite boffo reviews for "Spamalot" at Wynn Las Vegas, audience demand is tepid. To wit:

Exhibit 1: Wynn set up a booth last Friday at First Friday in the downtown Arts District to give away vouchers for 500 seats to first comers. Giving them away! Yikes.

Exhibit 2: I stopped by the half-price ticket counter in the Coke bottle across from the Monte Carlo on Saturday afternoon after trying (and failing due to the MGM Mirage systemwide sportsbook glitch that the mainstream media entirely ignored) to place my losing De La Hoya-Mayweather wager. Spamalot tickets were available at half price, for $66. This was a big, big weekend in Vegas and this was a Saturday night and the show can't sell out?

I still predict Wynn will keep it open at least a year regardless of the cost so as to not declare it a total failure.

While I was at the Coke bottle, by the by, I took note of who else was offering half-price seats on a very busy Vegas night. Mamma Mia had $50 seats, the self-proclaimed "New Mr. Las Vegas" George Wallace was up there for $40, Le Reve was available for $80 (not quite half-price, actually) and poor old Carrot Top was on sale for $20 a stick.

Is it time to start wondering if the Vegas show industry is in trouble?

Stomp: The Las Vegas Spectacular?

No matter what else I have to say about Planet Hollywood's "Stomp Out Loud," I have to give it props for having the coolest theater lobby in Vegas. Seriously. Just look at this stuff -- those letters are recycled from old Vegas marquees, that fountain made of a huge roulette wheel. Brilliant. And, by the way, totally free to look around at!

Now, on to the commentary...

By now we're all familiar with this story: A show takes New York or London or some place else by storm and then eventually finds itself a home in Las Vegas. And usually, as long as it's not a traditional Broadway musical, it usually does turn out successfully. Well, it worked for Cirque du Soleil, Blue Man Group and Mamma Mia. Not so well for some others that need not be named.

So here comes another, Stomp. Or, as they redubbed it, Stomp Out Loud. A cast of multiethnic performers, many of them physically unlikely to have become stage actors, make percussion music with a variety of household items. Brooms, water bottles, boxes, garbage cans.

It was impossible not compare Stomp to the Blue Man Group, a show I adore and, for some reason, can watch again and again without boredom. I enjoyed Stomp, just a little less and with no desire to return. And that's strange because intellectually I knew that what I saw in Stomp was more challenging. In BMG, they're backed up by a full band. They have lengthy sections of humor that have nothing to do with music. And they use those blue masks as a means of separating themselves from us normal humans in the audience.

In Stomp, all of the sound comes from a cast of real, uncostumed people on stage, each of whom gets their own character to act out without ever uttering a word. And, most of all, the brilliance of Stomp isn't actually the notion of making the music but the astounding feat of coordinating all of those people -- sometimes 15 at one time -- to make their peculiar noises in a way that is visually appealing and makes sense aurally. As I said, BMG has only three guys to coordinate.

Stomp Out Loud was great fun -- for the first hour. And then, spoiled audience member that I am, I got used to watching incredibly difficult feats and thought, 'What else ya got?'

And here's where it gets a little tricky. My companion for the night, Trevor, had seen Stomp twice before elsewhere. And he tells me this version was more than 60 percent the same as what he'd seen before. And that's a problem for Las Vegas. Just ask the folks at "Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular," who wisely realized they'd need to do something truly sensational to make it Vegas-worthy, so they built a $40 million theater and reinvented the chandelier-crash as a thrill ride of sorts.

Stomp had some new things -- live showers on the stage that provide for an intriguing and sexy sequence with some new sounds, a mammoth roulette wheel on the back wall that twirled and lit up -- but is it new enough to make people want to shell out $50 to $110 here?

Maybe. I'll let that question just hang out there. I was wrong four years ago about Mamma Mia, which I didn't think had a chance. And I thought "Avenue Q" would catch on. So all I'll say is that if you've never seen it before, this "Stomp" is worthy. And did I mention that the lobby is really amazing?