March 17, 2003
'She’s Just Not Vegas'

In Dino and Sammy’s town, the lifers puzzle over Celine

By STEVE FRIESS and LORRAINE ALI

Frank. Sammy. Dino. Céline. Céline? Though Céline Dion’s Las Vegas show, “A New Day... ,” won’t open until March 25, it’s already touted as the biggest spectacle since the Rat Pack.

CONSIDER THE CANADIAN crooner’s custom-built, $95 million Colosseum theater at Caesars Palace, or her three-year, five-night-a-week contract that pays about $80,000 a show. And then there’s the billboard: it even eclipses the one for Siegfried and Roy. “This lady is like an extraterrestrial,” one big-name Vegas headliner told NEWSWEEK, “landing her spaceship here for a few years, sucking up all the oxygen and then flying away. You’ll never see her showing up at other people’s openers and that sort of thing. She’s just not Vegas.”

While the tight-knit group of current hotel headliners work hard just to keep their names above the $9.99 surf-and-turf specials on the marquee, Dion is waltzing in as the top-selling female pop star in recording history. What’s in it for her, besides the money? No grueling tours. She gets to play mom by day and diva by night with a 20-minute limo ride in between. (Plans to commute by helicopter were nixed after neighbors objected.) Céline will fly—OK, there’s a cable or two involved—but in front of the world’s largest LED screen and above a half-acre stage. And mastermind Franco Dragone, former Cirque du Soleil creator, vows the 90-minute spectacle will “transport viewers to other places.”

That’s what people are worried about. “If this thing isn’t knock-you-out amazing, it will embarrass the whole city,” said one official with Mandalay Resort Group, which owns five competing hotel-casinos in Las Vegas. “They’ve got this so hyped that if it’s not something out of this world, the media will be happy to tell everyone not to bother coming here.” Naturally, the insider criticism and gos-sip irks Robert Stewart, VP for corporate communications at Caesars Palace’s parent company, Park Place Entertainment. When asked about current rumors—that Dion may not serve out her contract, that she’ll lip-sync parts of the show and that ticket sales have been soft because admission ($90 to $130) is too high—he retorts, “I don’t know what cocktail waitresses you’ve been talking to.” Later, he apologizes but notes, “There are always people out there wanting to take shots.”

Clint Holmes, who does a Sammy-style cabaret act just across the street from Céline, says he bears her no ill will, but wonders how long she’ll last. “She’s gonna come in with guns blazing,” he says. “But it’ll be interesting to see if she’ll enjoy doing this a year from now.” Such performers as Holmes, Sheena Easton and Wayne Newton meet once a month for drinks at a Vegas Ruth’s Chris; will Céline be joining the gang? One regular laughs. “We’d love it, but I don’t see it happening.” Even if she becomes a Las Vegas lifer, Dion probably doesn’t, either.

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