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‘Zumanity’s Edie brings the drag Downtown with ‘Faaabulous! The Show’

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Christopher Kenney, aka Edie, performs during Faaabulous! The Show at Notoriety Live in Downtown Las Vegas.
Photo: Yasmina Chavez

The spirit of Zumanity lives on. Cast and crew members from the permanently shuttered Cirque du Soleil show have been busy creating other experiences in and around Las Vegas, including Apéro Show at the Baobab Stage at Town Square and the upcoming desert festival Ignite (see Page 32).

The most prominent character from Zumanity has also found new life, bringing a boost to a burgeoning Downtown venue at the same time. Christopher Kenney, who emceed the show for more than a decade as Edie, the “Mistress of Sensuality,” has established a Friday-night residency for the drag spectacular Faaabulous! The Show at Notoriety Live at Neonopolis. Kenney created the show with partner Jamie Morris—one of the hosts of Puppetry of the Penis at the Erotic Heritage Museum and a writer who contributed to Zumanity.

Faaabulous! The Show

Faaabulous actually got its start before the pandemic and the closure of Zumanity, when Kenney and Morris showcased it in 2019 at another Downtown venue, Ron Decar’s Event Center. “We did four shows to see if we had something, and the response was amazing,” Kenney says. “We felt excited and proud and thought we were ready to … try to get it into a casino. But doing 10 shows a week in Zumanity [caused it] to fall to the back burner for the next few months, and then COVID came.”

When Cirque and MGM Resorts announced the end of Zumanity after 17 years at New York-New York, it lit a fire.

“That show should have never, ever closed,” Kenney says. “But I feel like my old self, my New York self, the guy who was just really excited to perform, like ‘What’s the next gig?’ It’s been really fun. The creativity is really flowing, and it feels really good.”

Kenney worked for years as a dancer and drag artist in New York City before landing in Las Vegas, and Faaabulous has connected the entertainer with those strong roots. He also created the Edie character long before performing on the Strip.

Faaabulous has been an expansive learning experience, with his small team collaborating to produce and market the show, as well as educating the audience about the venue Notoriety Live, which had barely opened its doors before the pandemic struck.

“We’re teaching people where it’s at and how to get there, where to park,” he says. “We’re just coming out of the train station—hopefully it will be successful and we get more people in seats. We’ve had great audiences; we just need to get the word out more to tourists. Right now, it’s mostly locals who are coming, and the energy is great.”

Notoriety has been building buzz in recent months, as other familiar entertainers and events have taken up residency there, including singer Clint Holmes and composer Keith Thompson, whose showcase events have traditionally been presented at the Smith Center.

Faaabulous is currently playing to audiences of 80 in the Robin Leach Lounge, one of three operational showrooms at Notoriety. The singing is all live, so it’s a bit different from traditional drag cabarets, and the small cast is stocked with veteran Vegas, LA and New York performers, including Christopher Lash, Brooks Braselman, Justin Rodriguez and Ashton Sawyer, plus dancers Curtis Goodman and Taylor Bradley.

“Christopher Lash wrote us an original opening song, and the energy of that song opens and closes the show,” Kenney says. “There are just a lot of great vibes coming from the audience. It’s nice to feel that again. We give it to the audience and hopefully they like it and give it back to us, and it turns into this spinning magical thing for an hour and 10 minutes. It’s a great feeling.”

FAAABULOUS! THE SHOW Fridays, 8 p.m. $40. Notoriety Live, 702-472-7514, notorietylive.com.

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Brock Radke

Brock Radke is an award-winning writer and columnist who currently occupies the role of managing editor at Las Vegas Weekly ...

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