Funny how often Las Vegas intersects with Hollywood, especially if we're talking Jubilee! at Bally's. Say, for example, you're channel surfing and run across one of those classic movie networks that features films from Hollywood's heyday when the stars decided to do a show in a barn or a theater. You root them on as these kids try to convert Uncle Harry's dilapidated shed, or the new bright-eyed girl from Kansas gives it her all in the big city. Finally, good triumphs over evil, and all obstacles fall away, and the show begins.
All that's left is for you to sit there taking in the beautiful costumes, larger-than-life sets, the singing and dancing that continue across a stage that seems to go on and on. Before you know it, you've become caught up in the grandeur that was old Hollywood. And then, as the credits roll, you remember how real world theaters, including most of those on Broadway, don't have stages that could actually hold a theatrical production as big as the ones in the movies. (But then, who ever said the Las Vegas Strip was part of the real world?)
With a cast of 100 outstanding singers and dancers on a stage that is half the size of a football field and 15 stories tall from the bottom of the orchestra pit to the roof, you can actually enjoy live and in person that same feeling of old movie musical grandeur in Donn Arden's Jubilee! at Bally's. This Las Vegas perennial, which marks its 25th anniversary this year, is well known for its stunningly beautiful topless showgirls in elaborate breathtaking purple-and-orange plumage, but this highly entertaining production is so much more. With 100 different sets and backdrops, 100,000 light bulbs and 1,000 costumes designed by Bob Mackie and Pete Menefee at an original cost of $3.5 million, 70 crew members are required to run the seven-act musical extravaganza.
Within minutes of the time the curtain rises to open a grand production number even Hugh Hefner himself would forget the nudity around him and become absorbed in the award-winning production. And why not? After all, Celine Dion may be singing down the street, but thanks to the majesty of the Jubilee Theatre and brilliant staging and set design, this is where you actually get to witness the sinking of the Titanic.
So do yourself and all those in your group a favor by taking in this richly fulfilling buffet for the senses, Donn Arden's Jubilee!, where old Vegas meets old Hollywood.