LAS VEGAS - It's The Phantom of the Opera,
so you know what to expect. Young Christine will sing with melancholy
about her romantic interest in both a handsome aristocrat and
a masked opera house squatter. And, of course, a large light
fixture will crash.
The real star of the 95-minute version that
opens here Saturday may turn out to be the theater itself: a
$40 million edifice that adds an only-in-Vegas thrill-ride element.
Most notably, the 1-ton chandelier made of hand-strung crystal
hurtles down amid pyrotechnics from above only to stop a mere
10 feet above the heads of some in the audience.
Perhaps even more astonishing: Phantom's home
at the Venetian Hotel-Casino is merely the latest elaborate
entry in the Vegas side business of theater building.
"The reason one does this in Vegas is because
one can," says David Rockwell, Phantom Theatre's New York-based
designer. "There are the resources to do it; physically you
can do it. You get to start over with something familiar."
Indeed, freed of the space constraints of Manhattan
and London, and armed with money from casino conglomerates,
show producers can dream bolder than on Broadway or in the West
End. A single Vegas showroom can cost more than the combined
budgets for all new Broadway productions for a given year.
Attracting some of the 40 million tourists
who pass through Vegas each year makes it worthwhile for Caesars
Palace to plunge $95 million into a showroom tailored for Celine
Dion or for the MGM Grand to build a $165 million space for
Cirque du Soleil's Ka.
In the case of Phantom, the version at the
Venetian is actually one imagined by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber
and director Hal Prince when they first staged the tale in the
1980s.
"It's a dream come true," Webber says. "We
can do things (here) that we could never have done in any other
context."
To wit, this edition - rebranded Phantom: The
Las Vegas Spectacular- will occur in an 1,800-seat playhouse
designed throughout to look like the 19th-century Opera Garnier
in Paris. Because the narrative starts in a ruined opera house,
the audience first sees the chandelier astrew and huge canvas
draping the walls. When the tale flashes back, the canvas flies
off, and the chandelier pieces assemble and light up in an 80-foot-wide
dome.
The trend of customizing Vegas theaters started
in the early 1990s. Steve Wynn recruited Cirque to create Mystre
in a $32 million building at his Treasure Island resort. That
showroom, where Mystre continues to run, led to more elaborate
theaters, including the $80 million O Theater in 1998 at the
Bellagio and $100 million Aqua Theater in 2005 at the Wynn Las
Vegas resort for Le Reve, a Cirque-style production by O show
creator Franco Dragone.
Says Dale Hurt, Aqua Theater operations technical
director: "It's not necessarily a matter of one-upping the others,
but more 'Let's do something different.' "
Customized theaters have drawbacks, Dragone
admits. Le Reve was widely panned, and Dragone says he couldn't
make some changes because the showroom is so specific. Dragone
was recently removed from the show, in fact, as part of an effort
by Wynn to overhaul it.
Another risk: that the technology could overshadow
human performers.
Prince, who won a Tony for the original Broadway
version, is unconcerned. "Phantom is the last show in the world
that needs defending. The reason it has run so well for all
these years is because it is an intensely romantic story that
people love, not because of the chandelier. And that will be
the same way in Las Vegas." risk: that the technology could
overshadow human performers.
Prince, who won a Tony for the original Broadway
version, is unconcerned. "Phantom is the last show in the world
that needs defending. The reason it has run so well for all
these years is because it is an intensely romantic story that
people love, not because of the chandelier. And that will be
the same way in Las Vegas."
