This Week's LVW col: Sierra Boggess in London

As I Tweeted, we visited ascendant theater phenom and former Vegas star Sierra Boggess in her dressing room at London's Adelphi Theatre, where she's almost done starring in "Love Never Dies," the Phantom sequel. Miles participated in that interview, and you can hear the full conversation on last week's episode of The Strip. Enjoy. -sf

Las Vegas’ biggest stage export
is conquering London and Broadway
By STEVE FRIESS

Sierra Boggess sits in a West End dressing room nursing an oversized “I Heart London” mug, wearing an adorable knitted beret and trying her best to be diplomatic.

The tiny actress with the LuPone-sized voice is grateful for her stint in Las Vegas and, quite literally, wouldn’t be where she is today without it.

Boggess played the female lead, Christine Daae, in the original cast of Phantom—The Las Vegas Spectacular in 2006, auditioning for the role despite her now-former agent’s anti-Vegas prejudice. But, no, she doesn’t see herself back on the Strip anytime soon—which probably means never.

“Vegas is not a place I’d want to live,” she said carefully, her voice dipping in a Londoner accent she claims not to hear. “I’m happy I tried it, but that’s not where I want my career to be.”

Normally, this would get my dander up. What does she mean, it’s not a place to live? Why can’t her career be here?

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com

The Show is UP: Hi, Sierra!

Here's our second kitchen-table show, this time broadcast via UStream when we did it live. We'll probably do our next live show on Monday night. As always, you can subscribe to The Strip (it's free!) in iTunes or Zune to get the latest show and various specials. Enjoy. -sf

Feb. 10: Hi, Sierra
REISSUE: Sierra Boggess on The Strip in 2006

If you rack your brain hard enough, you’ll still fail to come up with any star of the Vegas stage quite like Sierra Boggess. We’ve had plenty of hugely famous people perform and countless formerly famous people attempt to revive careers here. But Boggess is singular as an actress whose first big break was in a Vegas production, “Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular”, and who has then moved on to star in a major Broadway production followed, now, by opening the Phantom sequel “Love Never Dies” in London’s West End. Now the 28-year-old is about to return to Broadway as one of the most in-demand ingénues of her age. We visited our little Sierra in her dressing room in London last week, and we’ll play that conversation for you today.

In Banter: Our London sojourn, the Twitter Twerps drama, Super Bowl TV ad drama, Cher's odd goodbye.

Links to stuff discussed:

Steve’s Flickr page of London pix
Alex Hull’s Buzz Lightyear drawing
The British Airways menu image
London Club’s Empire Casino in Leicester Square, London
The Twitter Twerps Column
Our first interview with Sierra Boggess from 2007
Broadway.Com on Sierra's Rebecca reading
Sierra Boggess nominated for Olivier Award

THE STRIP IS LIVE ON MONDAY AT 8 P.M. PT (REALLY!)

OK, folks. We've figured out how to do this, so we will be recording our show at 8 p.m. PT on Monday evening and you can watch and listen via UStream by going here: http://ustre.am/tGQx

When you go there, you'll see this:


Our guest is Sierra Boggess, formerly of "Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular" and presently the star of the show's sequel, "Love Never Dies." Miles and I visited her in her dressing room at the Adelphi Theatre in London's West End last week.

We'll also talk about Cher, the Super Bowl, our London trip, the Twitter Twerps dramas and more. So join us or wait for the podcast version, probably out on Tuesday. That's your call!