Afflicted with a Gothamite's cultural conceit—forever a New Yorker, forever convinced that theater by any civilized standard cannot thrive under a casino roof alongside inanimate pickpockets squealing "WHEEL ... OF ... FORTUNE!" in a city drunk on debauchery and allergic to the arts—I settled into Las Vegas anyway.
Nearly eight years later, I bristle at East Coast acquaintances dismissive of my Left Coast theater town.
Smug elitists. (They talk funny, too.)
My conversion is powered by more than the provincial pride of a cross-country transplant.
After years of a token Broadway presence on the Strip and local theater outfits toiling in isolated ignorance of each other, Las Vegas may be nearing theatrical vibrancy both on and off its fabled thoroughfare.
C'mon along and listen to the lullaby of Vegas; the hip-hooray and bally-hoo, the lullaby of Vegas ...
"It's a good sign for live entertainment in general to have so many shows going on at once," says Ernest Hemmings, director of Downtown's Test Market theater company. "In our situation, we cannot help but have a play running at the same time as other theater companies, since we do a new show every month."
On the Strip, three current Broadway-level productions could balloon into at least five in the next two years, irritating New York producers threatened by this desert incursion into their long-dominant domain. Off the Strip, this weekend alone delivers five thematically diverse productions to local stages (plus two Broadway-inspired revues), avoiding last season's annoying duplications (who needed a double-dip of Hello, Dolly! or stagings of both The Taming of the Shrew and its tuneful translation, Kiss Me Kate?), and serving multiple demograpics.
"Even with the amount of theater productions available, Las Vegas Little Theatre has seen an increase in season sales," says LVLT board member Paul Thornton. "The more the media, both mainstream and alternative, begin to recognize the importance of theater arts to the community and report on it, the better it will be."
Just as, TV-wise, NBC recently announced the Jay-to-Conan Tonight Show handoff five years down the line, laying the foundation for its future, we may look back on today as the moment Vegas nailed down a healthy theatrical tomorrow.
The rumble of the monorail (well, maybe), the blazing of the neon; a bunch of swells who come to wail; whether they're stars or peons ...
This week, the local pickings hopscotch across genres. The adult draws are the mystery/drama Misery (New City Theatre) and the seriocomic classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Community College of Southern Nevada), while Greatest-Generation nostalgia buffs can revel in Signature Productions' Fascinating '40s, described as a "World War II musical diary" (Summerlin Library Performing Arts Center). Families are the market for Peter Pan with Cathy Rigby (Cashman Theatre), the season launch of the Las Vegas Broadway series, which this year relocates to Cashman from the Aladdin. And alternative aficionados can psychoanalyze Psycho Beach Party, the latest dollop of loopy theater from Test Market (SEAT at the Arts Factory).
Meanwhile, though not a full-scale play, Ethel Merman's Broadway, starring Rita McKenzie, obviously has show tunes in its soul (Charleston Heights Arts Center, sponsored by the City of Las Vegas). And Tony-winning Broadway baby/ex-EFX star Tommy Tune is back in town with the Manhattan Rhythm Kings at UNLV.
This all rolls in behind last weekend's treat for Bard boosters, the Nevada Shakespeare in the Park production of Romeo and Juliet, and season-starters from the community's twin King Kongs: LVLT's Driving Miss Daisy and Nevada Conservatory Theatre's satiric original Harlequin Brill and Pulitzer-winner Proof, at UNLV.
Momentum actually gathered speed late last season, when several shows—notably LVLT's The Philadelphia Story, CCSN's Sweeney Todd and UNLV's Floyd Collins—played to sold-out houses, a relative rarity in these theatrical parts.
When a Vegas baby says good night, it's early in the morning; Las Vegas babies don't sleep tight until the dawn ...
"We are seeing more cooperation between companies," says Walter Niejadlik, LVLT's president.
"We originally had the rights to Proof and had it on our season as the first show. UNLV also had the show for October. Working with UNLV, we dropped the show and changed to Miss Daisy. Also, New City Theatre brought 20-plus volunteers to one of our work calls this summer to help get the old theater together for Miss Daisy when we decided it had to be in the old space."
Old space/new space issues arise from an encouraging indicator of growth for LVLT, which plans to relocate to a brand-new theater, double the space and a few doors down from its current digs on Schiff Drive. Often faced with two productions in rehearsal simultaneously—its main-stage shows and late-night Insomniac Projects—in its increasingly cramped quarters, one cast is inevitably relegated to lobby run-throughs. But the shift to the new theater, originally set for the Daisy season debut, has been stalled by construction and permit delays (new home-owners can relate). November's A Streetcar Named Desire will be performed in the old venue, with January now the target date for the move.
"Admittedly, we chose to hurriedly replace [Proof] with Driving Miss Daisy, unwittingly stepping on Theatre in the Valley," Thornton says. "But with CCSN's [theater professor] Joe Hammond being directly involved with us, there was an almost constant dialogue between the two companies during the process of choosing plays for the current season. We and UNLV's Conservatory have agreed to check in with each other prior to either company announcing the 2005-'06 season, or going to print with brochures."
CCSN theater professor/actor/director Doug Baker points out that while some conflicting performance dates are unavoidable due to school schedules and theater availability, local troupes at least have the issue on the brain now. "We certainly know the work of the other theater companies," Baker says. "Even more telling, and why I think we do this, is the fact that the actors in the community travel and perform in all our theaters, which very much makes us aware."
Cross-theatrical pollination has even been formalized at New City Theatre, where owner Yehoshua "Josh" Sofer has set up several programs to push performers out of their cocoon. "We have a production team that has decided to make cooperation part of their agenda," Sofer says.
"We've been taking between 10 and 20 members to every show in town in an effort to show support. We list all the theaters on our website and now on our programs, as well. I would love to see a spring theater festival promoted by all the theaters that would sell one ticket for the entire festival and have five or more theatrical productions, with different theaters participating."
Additionally, New City stages a monthly "monologue" contest with cash prizes for members, with plans to eventually open it up to the public. "We'll try to get the various theaters to take turns hosting it," Sofer adds.
On the marketing front, LVLT also shares ads with fellow groups, distributing programs at last summer's musicals at Spring Mountain Ranch's Super Summer Theatre, in exchange for Ranch advertising in LVLT programs next spring.
"We often will lend out costumes and props when we are able, to help out other companies," Niejadlik says. "Hopefully, this will continue to grow and make the Las Vegas theater community that much stronger."
C'mon along and listen to the lullaby of Vegas; the hi-de-hi and boop-buh-doo, the lullaby of Vegas ...
The drips-and-drabs days of occasional Broadway drop-ins on the Strip—Starlight Express, Chicago, Notre Dame de Paris (which dropped in on its way to Broadway, then dropped off the planet)—are apparently giving way to a steadier stream of show tunes:
• Balancing Mamma Mia—a hit since its February 2003 debut, anchoring the south end of the Strip at Mandalay Bay—is a scaled-back version of Broadway's Saturday Night Fever (based on the movie), which took up residence last June on the north end, at the Sahara hotel, bookending the Strip in disco and drama.
• June also brought an announcement that stunned the Gotham theater establishment: Ever-adventurous Steve Wynn and producers of Broadway's risque puppet-fave Avenue Q struck a deal for the Tony-winner to skip the time-honored national tour in favor of an open-ended run at the mogul's upcoming Wynn Las Vegas, set for a fall 2005 debut.
• In August, the Queen-inspired We Will Rock You, which originated in London, bypassed Broadway to nest at Paris Las Vegas.
• A trimmed-to-90-minutes Phantom of the Opera, directed by stage legend Harold Prince (who helmed the original two-and-a-half-hour Phantom that bowed in New York in 1988) and altered by its composer, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, will stalk the Venetian hotel in the spring of 2006, occupying the former Guggenheim Museum, which closed last year.
"It's a deal with the devil," one New York producer snapped to trade paper Variety, referring to the Avenue Q arrangement. "Broadway producers won't ever get slot machines in their lobbies."
That was merely a fraction of the reaction—ranging from mildly vexed to heatedly pissed—that ricocheted around Gotham, venom squarely aimed at Vegas, now frequently paired with the phrase, "Broadway West."
The band begins to go to town and everyone goes crazy; you rock-a-bye your baby 'round till everything gets hazy ...
Why the snit?
Broadway depends on road-company revenue to bulk up business and coax theatergoers around the country to come and munch on the Apple, and the Avenue Q deal, particularly, undermines the bottom line. But for the producers, the benefits for a show are obvious, assuming they're not concerned with Broadway's overall health.
"The great thing about Vegas is that we don't have to go to America," Kevin McCollum, an Avenue Q producer, told the Associated Press. "America will come to us."
For Saturday Night Fever and We Will Rock You—the former a success in London but fried by fire-breathing New York critics during its East Coast run, the latter dismissed by London reviewers, its producers preferring to skip Broadway altogether—the Vegas option offers the chance to fight the critical power and survive outside the Theater Capital of the World, rather than perish within it.
In Broadway's top-down power structure, New York critics still wield the clout to close a show. In the more democratic, tourist-dollar-driven milieu of Vegas, vacationing fanny-packers are likely to be a more mellow measure of quality, ensuring a longer stage life.
Hush-a-bye, I'm gonna buy you this and that, you hear your daddy singing; then baby goes home to her flat to sleep all day ...
It's the prospect of a seriously slimmed-down Phantom, however, that gets the pulse dipping and dancing among local fans and performers, who trade thoughts on the Vegas chatroom of talkingbroadway.com.
Some sample postings:
• "After building up Las Vegas as being a new venue for Broadway shows, I hear this disturbing news about the edit—or should I say 'butcher job'—on the [Phantom] script. This is so the theater patrons can go gamble after the show. You know, I think Las Vegas will become known as the Cliff Notes of Broadway theater."
• "If you can't stomach the creator changing his own work, I would suggest buying a video of the show so it will always be the same for you. Personally, I am very happy that more legit theater, and, I hope, union, is coming to Vegas. It will pour millions of dollars into the theater industry here. Cut-down does not equal cut-rate. I'd rather see a professional, mega-million-dollar, original-director, 90-minute version of Phantom than a three-hour non-Equity tour of it at the Aladdin any day."
• "Las Vegas is a terrific town, with all of its problems, and we are striving for legitimate theater here. But what bugs me the most is the cutting of the show, not art for art's sake, or to make POTO a better show. No, it's greed, pure and simple. Get the tourists and locals in to see a quick show, and out in a hurry to check out the gambling scene. So we don't get the entire production, but a 'tab' version. ... My husband suggested that the radio and TV ads should call it 'Highlights of Phantom.' Maybe the production will be OK, but I don't think so."
• "Yes, we are Vegas and we are trying to present these shows in casinos that want the audience back at the tables as soon as possible, but I don't see anyone else putting up the $35 million to bring this, or any other show in."
Good night, baby, good night, the milkman's on his way; sleep tight, baby, sleep tight, let's call it a day ...
How does the Broadway boom figure into the off-Strip stage scene? Pick a side.
Test Market's Hemmings is blunt and unimpressed. "The impact of Broadway productions coming to the Las Vegas Strip will have the same impact as Blue Man Group or Cirque did—virtually no impact at all," Hemmings says. "Strip entertainment can only affect the community at large if [local] groups were allowed to promote their shows near or on the Strip. Test Market has firsthand experience of paying bribes to hustle street corners, being harrassed by police and chased by middle-management lackeys from various hotels while sun-worn immigrants hand out free porn."
(Nothing outmuscles free porn, Ernest.)
Baker of CCSN is similarly disinclined to attach serious significance to a theatrically enhanced Strip, maintaining that its glitzy heart will always belong to more showbizzy entertainment rather than theater in its purest sense. "I think the 'Broadway West' thing is an advertising slogan, much more a sales pitch than a reality," Baker says. "Don't get me wrong, I think the shows on the Strip are just fine, and are a value to our culture and some grand and good entertainment, but legitimate theater is something else. Local theaters serve a different purpose and will not be affected by the tourist attraction these performances are geared to."
Thornton points out that the "Broadway West" label isn't new, given the '80s burst of Great-White-Way plays at major properties.
New or not, Niejadlik welcomes a spillover effect. "I think it's fabulous that we have more 'Broadway' shows in town," he says. "We do actually see a small number of folks visiting from out of town who find us and come to see our shows. While tourists will never replace locals as our primary audience, it's good to see more tourists taking advantage of the theater in town that is off the Strip."
However it might boost community audiences, a potential "Broadway West" effect could pay even larger dividends on local stages.
"I believe strongly that theater begets theater, and it could only help small theater, but one of our most significant problems is the lack of a professional attitude by actors, directors and all connected with any production," says New City's Sofer.
"Increasing the number of professional productions may increase the awareness of what it means to pursue acting professionally and help directors of small theaters stage a more professional show. Currently, we are forced to compete for actors with amusement shows like Star Trek: The Experience, convention modeling, and extra work. It's not uncommon to have an actor drop out in the middle of a production to take a job as a singing waiter, where in any theater town in America, the process would be reversed."
C'mon along and listen to the lullaby of Vegas; the hip-hooray and bally-hoo, the lullaby of Vegas ...
It could all amount to zilch—the Strip's Broadway buildup merely another cultural belch at the Vegas entertainment trough, the community cooperation simply a hiccup in their otherwise out-for-themselves operations.
And yet, you can hear a lullaby echoing in the wind, and not a Gothamite in sight.