February 21, 2008 * THE STRIP SENSE

The next big thing: Audience interactive production shows?

By STEVE FRIESS

In last week’s column, we eulogized Broadway West, a trend that was given the old college try to the tune of many millions of dollars over the past four years but which is now running dry with a couple of minor exceptions. A string of underperformers have caused once-bullish casino operators to screech their Times Square shopping to a halt.

And yet, if sitting in a darkened theater and being sung to and danced at while a plot unfolds doesn’t quite work for Vegas audiences, then what to do?

That’s the question the Gods of Vegas are trying to discern, and their answer—other than falling back on old reliables like headliner gigs and Cirque du Soleil spectacles—seems to be to make you part of the entertainment. Or something like that.

Later this year, look for an “interactive” show and dinner theater called Tamara to take up residency in a showroom being built for it right now at the Palazzo. It’s a little hard to describe what exactly it is, but the Toronto-originated smash bills itself on the otherwise empty website TamaraLasVegas.com as “the ultimate, intimate theatrical experience.”

As I understand it, Tamara is a show set in a large house. There are about a dozen cast members who do stuff all around the house, and audience members must decide which cast members they wish to follow and observe. In the original version, it was set in 1927 in an Italian villa, although word is that this version will take place in 1938, and the setting may be more specifically Venice to fit with the Palazzo’s older sister, the Venetian. The original show, the belle of the 1981 Toronto Theatre Festival, is to be shorn in half from three hours to 90 minutes, and spiced up a bit with, possibly, some nudity, such as one character taking a shower.

There’s a dinner served in there somewhere, too, and a mystery to be unraveled. So is it like a live-action version of Clue? We’ll have to wait and find out. But, more importantly, the puzzling question is how hundreds of audience members can file into rooms to watch whichever characters they’re following. Sounds like mayhem unless they don’t allow many people in, and then tickets would be quite expensive if a profit is to be made.

One of my podcast listeners opined in the show’s live chat room last week that “interactive shows don’t work in Las Vegas.”

And yet there’s some evidence to the contrary. Tamara, which had a long, successful run in Los Angeles in the 1980s and early 1990s and also popped up in New York, won’t be the first such interactive production to be staged here. The oft-forgotten Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, a show in which the audience members are “guests” at a stereotypical Italian wedding, has been surprisingly durable over at the Rio. Plus, although they’re daytime productions, The Price Is Right Live at Bally’s and The $250,000 Game Show Spectacular at the Las Vegas Hilton both put the audience to work in creating entertainment. None is a failure.

The Rio folks clearly dig this concept, seeing how they were thisclose to turning the showroom recently vacated by Prince into the first U.S. version of Coco Bongo, a Cancun, Mexico, “theatrical nightclub.” That is, it’s a dance club at which a succession of eye-popping shows—think Cirque-style acrobats, La Cage-style celeb impersonators and South Beach-style Latin music—whirl around all night long. Trouble was, insiders say, getting the licenses to play certain American music would have made it too expensive to produce in the United States. Apparently in Mexico, copyright protections are more loosely enforced.

More is coming. The producers of American Idol have been trying their darnedest to figure out a Vegas angle, albeit unsuccessfully thus far. Could we have a nightly AI-style talent show in which audience members compete and audience members vote? Or even a nightly show broadcast or streamed live from Vegas where not just audience members, but a worldwide Internet audience votes as well?

The thing I’ve always wondered is why no major TV talk shows have decided to film here. In New York or Los Angeles or Chicago, they give seats to The Tonight Show and The Oprah Winfrey Show away. In Vegas, they could make a deal with a resort for the showroom, sell those same tickets and make a fortune. Not to mention, Tyra, how easy it would be to find prostitutes to be guests!

Then again, I believed Avenue Q was a good idea and wondered how Celine Dion would persuade 20,000 people a week to see her. I cannot fathom why people sit through The Scintas, and I think Gerry “The Mentalist” McCambridge should have a bigger marquee than Danny Gans.

One thing is clear: The Gods of Vegas are still trying to figure it out, too. Anyone got any good ideas?

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