I may be the only person in Las Vegas sad to see the demise of The Showroom at the Venetian (formerly known as C2K). And even I admit the feeling is nostalgia and not regret, since this should have happened long ago. Still, the Showroom has played host to some of the oddest experiences I've ever had covering entertainment in Las Vegas.
In December 1999, I was one of the few and the proud to attend alternative country rocker Steve Earle's concert in C2K. He was brought in for two nights to play his hard-hitting and famously left-leaning songs for the rodeo week crowd, which didn't exactly show up to hear him rail against the death penalty. It was like having a private concert. Earle, however, had to cut it short, because a long and irritable line had formed outside C2K and was impatient to get into Hedonizm, a nightclub event scheduled for later. Not knowing about the concert, the promoter of Hedonizm had passed out fliers all over town promising free admission to early arrivals.
One exiting Earle fan looked at the flyer for Hedonizm: "That's a whole bunch of sex, right?" he asked me. Then he shook his head.
The promoter's girlfriend, on the other hand, was shocked by the sight of Steve Earle. "How can he make records looking like that?" she exclaimed. "He looks like he works at Kmart. The man had no style."
Earle cancelled his show for the next night.
In July 2001, I saw another fantastic show play to the empty Showroom. It was Robert Goulet, a Vegas legend, who would normally be a sure thing. The audience was forced to sit elbow-to-elbow in plastic chairs that were no better than the kind set up in a high-school gym for a student play. Keep in mind that Goulet's audience is not young, and the tickets started at $78. The show closed within a month and Goulet lost a small fortune.
A far bigger fortune was the $250 million Michael Flatley's company announced was coming its way in a deal signed to bring Lord of the Dance to the Venetian for five years. The ludicrous claim meant that even though Lord had closed at New York-New York just months earlier, the show was suddenly now the highest-paid act on the Strip, a far larger investment than Celine Dion. And Michael Flatley wasn't even in it! Set to close this week, Lord of the Dance won't even last the five years.
The reason the Showroom was the scene for all this foolishness was that the Venetian had foolishly placed the Showroom beyond its control by leasing it to an outside company, H&H. Instead of producing shows, nightclub events and concerts, H&H tended to make money by renting out the Showroom to entrepreneurial acts in a common practice known as "four-walling." These acts quickly discovered just how hard it was, though, to make rent on the Strip without any deal, relationship or marketing support with the casino you perform at. As a result, it required chutzpah and a willingness to lose money to rent the Showroom at the Venetian, not talent. A ridiculously quick succession of acts passed through the Showroom. Remember Nebulae—The Lifeforce or Sourire? Even Andrew Dice Clay worked the room for a time. If possible, things got even worse with the death of a 21-year-old from a drug overdose on a club night in 2000. From that point on, the Venetian—except for trying to evict H&H—more or less acted like the Showroom didn't exist.
With the arrival of Melinda the First Lady of Magic in July 2000, promoter and producer David Saxe finally figured out how to make an act succeed in the Showroom by being savvy about things like group sales to time shares and special deals with ticket-brokers. Saxe's efforts guaranteed an audience for a show, which was what was needed. When Melinda retired, Saxe didn't miss a beat and opened V: The Ultimate Variety Show to take her place. Their knowledge of Vegas ticket practices from the experience at New York-New York probably allowed the producers of Lord of the Dance to work out a similar support structure.
Regardless, by subleasing its showroon, the Venetian wound up in the horrible position of never really being able to compete. Since opening, the Venetian has never hosted a top show that could rival the interest in Celine at Caesars or the MGM's army of Cirque shows or even Mamma Mia or Blue Man at the Mandalay properties.
As with everything else in its troubled history, even the demise of the Showroom remains a bit clouded in mystery. V: The Ultimate Variety Show and Lord of the Dance are vacating, but neither H&H nor the Venetian have announced what is planned or who will be running it. My guess is that the Venetian has finally managed to regain control, and after some remodeling, the casino will finally have its own showroom, and the wild ride of the Showroom will be one more Vegas myth from back in the day.
Contributing editor Richard Abowitz covers entertainment for the Weekly.