The Strip Is Live Tonight At 8p PT!

Thirty years is a blink of the eye in most places, but it’s an eternity for the ever-changing Las Vegas Strip. This summer, the venerable, historic Donn Arden's Jubilee! celebrates the start of its fourth decade at Bally’s, so we chatted with the 88-year-old firecracker who has ruled the land of massive headdresses and sequined skivvies with an iron fist for all this time. Fluff LaCoque talks to Steve about bruised thighs, chubby guys, fake boobs and so much more this hour. Then we’ll hear from Jubilee’s most successful alumna, Tina Walsh, who was a singer and dancer for the show in the 1980s before starring in EFX, Mamma Mia! and presently Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular. Also, we just love her.

As usual, we'll play the interview starting at about 8 p.m. PT and you can hear that and chat with other listeners -- pluss watch Black, Jack and Aces do silly puppy things! -- on this UStream site. When Miles gets home from work, we'll do the regular parts of the show.

C'mon down! But if not, I'll try getting the podcast out probably Friday, so you can subscribe to The Strip (it's free!) in iTunes or Zune to get the latest show and various specials.

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.

Bam! The Strip is LIVE Tonight With Emeril Lagasse

Join us as always tonight at 7:05 p.m. PT for the live version of "The Strip," this time featuring star chef Emeril Lagasse and a chat with resurgent Strip star Tina Walsh, now starring in "Phantom" and subject of my current Las Vegas Weekly column.

Come on down to LVROCKS.Com for the live chat and hear us make all the mistakes we iron out of the show for the podcast version.

Or be that way and hear the show when it's posted on Thursday.

And yes, I asked Emeril the all-important question about his fast-food preferences. Ha.

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