LAS VEGAS - Veering sharply from its tradition of over-the-top
spectacle, this gambling capital is rolling the dice on intimate
musical theater. On Saturday, Avenue Q, the 2004 best
musical Tony winner, opens in previews for a multiyear gig at
the Wynn Las Vegas resort.
The show is the start of a suddenly intense liaison between
Times Square and the Las Vegas Strip. It's the first of a list
of established Broadway hits -- including Hairspray, Phantom
of the Opera and Spamalot -- about to take their
places in the next 18 months alongside Cirque du Soleil and
such headliners as Celine Dion and Elton John. The Billy Joel-scored
show Movin' Out is also in talks to set up in Vegas
by 2007.
In investing heavily in Broadway theater, Vegas hoteliers
such as Steve Wynn, whose deal bars Avenue Q from touring
in North America, are banking on the notion that at least some
of the city's 40 million tourists a year will embrace entertainment
with plots, characters and - gasp! - life lessons.
Wynn hopes the change of pace will mature the town and "add another dimension to the entertainment menu. This is that one thing we have not had in this city in great amounts. This is the beginning of a wonderful new chapter."
Actually, the chapter started in 2003 with Mamma Mia!,
the ABBA-scored juggernaut that opened a production at the Mandalay
Bay Resort and Casino. Skeptics predicted failure for the show,
which has several touring companies and runs longer than the
typical Vegas show length of 90 minutes. Instead, the production
hit its 1,000th performance this summer and continues to pack
them in.
Serious issues, light touch
Yet if Mamma Mia! proved that tourists would go for
a cute story stocked with already popular music, Avenue
Q is still a significant departure. The tale about life's
unpredictability is told in a lighthearted way through puppets
and human characters who confront issues of racism and homophobia.
Those are serious matters that tourists have rarely faced on
Vegas stages.
The show hasn't been sanitized for Vegas audiences, producers
say - hasn't been altered at all save for replacing a mention
of a subway card with a reference to a ticket stub from the
Vegas male revue Thunder from Down Under.
Wynn is so convinced that audiences will love it that he promised to build a $40 million theater in exchange for exclusivity - even though relatively few Americans are familiar with the music or characters.
"What seems to be true, without one single exception, is that entertainment considered great everywhere else is well received in Las Vegas."
He's not the only true believer, despite a spotty track record
of Broadway-style musicals in Vegas. Over the decades, everything
from Fiddler on the Roof to touring versions of Annie
and 42nd Street have greeted underwhelming crowds,
although Starlight Express ran for several years in the 1990s
and Chicago ran for more than a year before Mamma
Mia! arrived at the Mandalay Bay.
Avenue Q co-executive producer Kevin McCollum had
a prior failure here himself, having brought a production of
De la Guarda to the Rio All-Suites Hotel & Casino in
2000 only to close it after nine troubled months. And We
Will Rock You, a Queen-scored musical from London's West
End, limps to its first anniversary next month at the Paris
Las Vegas Hotel & Casino. After opening at full length, the
show was recently retooled down to 90 minutes.
"Vegas is still a question mark," says David Stone, producer
of Wicked, who turned down Vegas overtures to take
his Wizard of Oz prequel on tour but expects to eventually
end up in Vegas. "We can't really know yet what Vegas is for
us. I definitely think some of these shows may work, but I don't
know that they all will."
Tony enough for Tony?
Wynn and others think Vegas has changed since the earlier
failures, noting a surge in visitors that has led it to records
the past three years. The city is now a top dining destination,
having courted dozens of celebrated chefs to open eateries,
which has in turn lured a more cultured clientele likely to
enjoy Tony-winning shows, says MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman.
MGM Mirage owns Luxor Hotel & Casino, where Hairspray
is coming in February with Tony winner Harvey Fierstein reprising
his role as Edna Turnblad for at least the show's first three
months.
McCollum didn't need much convincing from Wynn that Vegas is different now. Ensconcing his unusual show in a heavily hyped new resort such as Wynn's seemed like a better idea than taking it on the road and having to win over audiences in a different city every few weeks on tour, he says.
"Word of mouth is very important for a unique show like Avenue
Q, and that's something that we can achieve in Las Vegas
much easier than we would going into the roadhouses," McCollum
says.
Room to grow theatrically
Vegas hoteliers can offer something else: custom-built theaters.
Broadway's theaters are so old that most are protected by historic
preservation laws barring physical overhauling, whereas the
Vegas desert offers vast empty spaces and a business model in
which shows are one part of a larger entertainment complex.
Thus, the Venetian Hotel & Casino can justify building a $40
million showroom for Phantom that gives author Andrew
Lloyd Webber the technological tricks he only dreamed of in
1989 when the show first opened.
Still, for some there's a trade-off. While Avenue Q and
Mamma Mia! run full length, versions of Hairspray,
Phantom and Spamalot are being shorn to 90 minutes.
Stage actors are also enthusiastic about the growing new market
for their wares, a far cry from the sneering view of Vegas heard
in the late 1990s when Tommy Tune and Michael Crawford baffled
Broadway by coming to the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino to star in
the long-running spectacle EFX.
Indeed, if Vegas performing experience used to be frowned
upon by casting agents in New York and Los Angeles, today there's
a new respect. Hairspray, in fact, plans to cast major
TV, stage and movie stars for its Vegas leads for three-month
gigs, general manager Michael Gill says.
"I don't think that stigma, the 'Oh, you're going to go to
Sin City to do a show in a casino,' is as strong as it once
was," says Avenue Q star John Tartaglia, part of the
original Broadway cast and a Tony nominee whose contract keeps
him in the Vegas company at least through mid-December. "That
barrier is being broken down very quickly. There's a lot of
excitement in the New York theater community about Vegas."
Where there's less enthusiasm is among the directors of the
bypassed roadhouses. Wynn signing Avenue Q and 2005
Tony winner Spamalot- which will tour but not in California,
Nevada or Arizona - means that many performing-arts centers
have lost a reliable subscription draw. The fact that Wynn snapped
up two consecutive best musicals spooked many.
"A certain number of the roadhouses are dependant on already-produced
shows from Broadway," says Michael Ritchie, creative director
for the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles. He would've taken
Spamalot "in a heartbeat." Wynn's grab of Avenue
Q "was a genius move, but we were all caught by surprise.
Once I saw it, I said, 'The rules have changed.' It just means
we have to be more creative."
Indeed, McCollum says the trend merely reflects the many opportunities now available to shows created in New York.
"Broadway is one aspect of the entire way in which theater makes itself happen," McCollum says. "It used to be Broadway was the only element. I don't see it that way anymore."
