reprinted from 

October 2, 2005

Live on the Strip: Broadway's Second City

By Jesse Green

LAS VEGAS — The only real problem with the newest Broadway Theater - a $40 million technical marvel featuring 1,200 cushy seats, ample legroom, excellent sightlines and the old-fashioned feeling of a temple, not a hangar - is getting there. For one thing, it's inconvenient to the subway. About 2,500 miles inconvenient.

For another, to reach this Broadway, which opened in August at the Wynn resort here, you have to pass through the gleaming, clanking casino, where doomed souls are chained Bosch-like to one-armed bandits and battalions of high-heeled hostesses dash by with trays of liquid encouragement. By the time you escape the smoky commotion and enter the theater - built for a production of the slacker puppet musical "Avenue Q" - you may welcome the chance to buy a $16 Kahlúa frozen chocolate in a souvenir Wynn glass at the gracious lobby bar. At least you needn't worry about gulping it down before curtain; it's allowed in the house. Indeed, the seats have cup holders.

When the producers of "Avenue Q" announced their decision to forgo the traditional multicity tour in favor of an indefinite run in the bowels of a casino, many theaterati, especially the shut-out road tour bookers, were outraged. Was the Tony-winning pride of Broadway, a New York show if ever there was one, being sent to the desert to be slaughtered? To be cut to 90 minutes, scrubbed of its Bush-bashing and performed by a non-Equity troupe of strippers and Elvises? Even though none of this turned out to be true, the grumblers still worried about the emergence of a crass money-sucking operation even more elaborate than the one long established in New York.

Well, get used to it. Down the same plush Wynn hallway that leads to "Avenue Q" is a door that opens on the site of the forthcoming theater where the Monty Python smash "Spamalot" is scheduled to arrive in 2007. (Further infuriating road bookers, the show will not tour Nevada, Arizona or California.) By then, "Hairspray," with its original stars Harvey Fierstein and Dick Latessa, will have opened at the Luxor; and at the Venetian, a retooled "Phantom of the Opera," with a fancier chandelier, will be ensconced in another new $40 million theater styled to resemble the Paris setting. Meanwhile, the "Mamma Mia!" replicant that pioneered the Broadway-in-Vegas trend in 2003 should be enjoying its fifth Abba-tastic year at the Mandalay Bay. Some resort operators and New York producers say that as many as a dozen more shows - including "Movin' Out" and "Wicked" - are also on their way.

If it isn't already, Las Vegas will soon be the second city of Broadway, home to more New York musicals than any market outside Manhattan. It was this, not just snobbery, behind the "Avenue Q" alarm: the fear of further disruption in an already unstable business. If Broadway shows went to Vegas instead of touring, what would happen to the traditional road theaters and their customers? More saliently, what would happen to their backers, who are often investors in New York productions? If they were outflanked by casino operators, how would that alter the kinds of shows that make it to Broadway in the first place? For even though the tail of touring had to some degree wagged the dog of Broadway for years, Vegas now threatened to clone a new dog entirely. A big dog with sequins.

In short, it seemed that Vegas was becoming more and more a Broadway town while Broadway was becoming more and more a gamble. To those still invested, despite all evidence, in the idea that Broadway had a unique cultural meaning that it selflessly shared with America on the road, the decampment of "Avenue Q" was proof that the Fabulous Invalid was once again dead, and this time its corpse had been stolen. But not only is this an overreaction, it may be missing the point, which is that a factory outlet mall for Broadway could actually be a boon. The goods may be last season's and less than a bargain (top "Avenue Q" seats go for $99 at the Wynn and $96.25 at the Golden in New York) but, hold onto your tap shoes, they may very well be better.

SO shoot me, I preferred "Avenue Q" in Vegas. And it wasn't only because I was stuck in casino-world and thus grateful for the familiar landscape of a New York show. No, the show itself (though the script is mostly unchanged and the cast is made up mostly of newcomers) had improved. In fact, all of the incoming shows may improve, if only because their original creative teams will have had the luxury of time (in the case of "Phantom," 18 years) to tweak or overhaul them. "Avenue Q" is playing at full length, but cutting episodic musicals like "Spamalot" or grandiose ones like "Phantom" to a 90-minute "tab" version (which under the casino contract allows actors to play 10 performances a week, instead of 8, for the same salary) strikes me as a useful challenge. Harold Prince, who staged "Phantom" on Broadway, is lopping a third of it, and even the creators of the tightly constructed "Hairspray" decided that excising two lesser numbers and the intermission would do no harm. As its director, Jack O'Brien, put it, referring to the finale, "You may not be able to stop the beat, but it turns out you can trim it a bit."

There was a time when Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Prince probably wouldn't be caught dead working in Vegas. Although entertainment has been part of the town's makeup from the beginning, its expression was limited to a few familiar forms. Celebrity club acts, topless revues, magicians, impersonators: these were the native fauna, and they were viewed as loss leaders for the gaming industry. But when Steve Wynn installed Siegfried and Roy at the Mirage in 1990, performing a supersized and more theatrical version of their old magic-and-wild-cat routine, something odd began to happen: profit. According to reports, the extravaganza generated $45 million a year until 2003, when it was shut down by a disgruntled cast member.

By then, an even more successful act was colonizing the Strip. Cirque du Soleil, the Montreal-based producer of theatrical spectacles that blend acrobatics, erotics and new-age clowning, opened its first Vegas show, "Mystère," in a custom-designed theater at Treasure Island, another Wynn property, in 1993. It's still running near capacity. Watching the profit mount, several other casinos soon ordered up their own Cirque shows and theaters, each more technically advanced and more expensive than the last. (A spokesman for the MGM Grand said that the latest, "KÀ," cost $165 million to get to Day 1 and millions more thereafter.) The competition was fueled in part by the resort owners' realization that shows could help brand their properties just as effectively as the architectural themes that make the Strip seem like a schizoid stage set. The scramble for branded theatrical entertainment became so fierce that another hit spectacle, "Blue Man Group," was recently seduced from its longtime home at the Luxor when the Venetian whispered promises of a flashier new theater in its cobalt ear.

Musicals seemed the next likely conquest, but what kind? Wheezing bus-and-truck tours on their last legs and a tepid four-year run of "Starlight Express" at the Hilton did not bode well for imported shows. And previous efforts to create home-grown product had failed in one way or another: a Michael Crawford vehicle called "EFX Alive" was a laughingstock but at least it ran; Jerry Herman's "Miss Spectacular," announced every year since sometime last century, never even materialized. Eventually the resort owners, having improbably lured star chefs with the promise of captive consumers, realized that they could do the same thing with theater. Once "Mamma Mia!" demonstrated that a full-length musical could be successful on the Strip - at least if it had already been successful somewhere else - everyone wanted one.

Actually, Mr. Wynn wanted three. To accessorize his eponymous new $2.7 billion resort (he lost his previous Vegas properties in a hostile takeover), he snagged, in addition to "Avenue Q" and "Spamalot," a new Cirque-like spectacular called "Le Rêve" from the former Cirque mastermind Franco Dragone. And for his resort's opening gala in April, he somehow persuaded no less a director than George C. Wolfe to stage the entertainment: a one-night-only club act starring Hugh Jackman.

Money is obviously a major factor in luring Broadway talent and product to Vegas. But so are bodies: nearly 40 million visitors a year, three-quarters of whom attend at least one show during their stay. "Let's look at 'Blue Man Group,' " Robert G. Goldstein, president of the Venetian, said, brandishing a calculator. "We've got 1,800 seats, 10 shows a week, 48 weeks a year. That's 864,000 seats. Figure 85 percent capacity, which is not unrealistic at all. Figure average ticket price of $100. That's $73 million potential gross in a year" - more than six times the show's potential at the Astor Place Theater, where the 300 seats go for $69 each. Even "Wicked," the most consistently sold-out musical on Broadway, can't beat such numbers because it can play only eight shows a week.

As Felix Rappaport, president and chief operating officer of the Luxor, said: "Face it, the financial model here is much better. Broadway, which arguably has the greatest concentration of live entertainment in the country, also has a failure rate of 90 percent."

The comparison with a traditional road tour is even more striking. "What the road seemed to be offering was at most 50 weeks," said Kevin McCollum, a producer of "Avenue Q," "with low guarantees because it wasn't a show about a warm kitten and your grandmother. Plus, they were asking us to change things that make the show what it is." He continued: "Also the size of theater our show works well in, 1,200 seats at most, doesn't exist on the road. Generally they're around 2,000 seats, as much as 4,500 in Atlanta."

At the Wynn, Mr. McCollum got the theater size he wanted, without censorship or the enormous cost of moving each week. And because concierges and cabbies are more influential than critics in Las Vegas, he also got the chance to let the work speak for itself. "On the road, by the time you develop word-of-mouth, you're in the next city," he said.

But in the long run, Vegas's biggest appeal may be to the artists. For stars, there's cachet and convenience: Mr. Fierstein may not wish to schlep from Toledo to Buffalo on the "Hairspray" tour, but three months in a house with a pool, even doing 10 shows a week on the Strip, is another story. For the directors and designers, there is the opportunity that arises from the city's ethos of constant - some say reckless - implosion and rebuilding. "Broadway theaters are lacking because they're landlocked and landmarked," said Michael Gill, who is co-producing the Las Vegas production of "Hairspray." "They have no space to grow or accommodate innovations. Here in Las Vegas we have nothing but space. There are no landmark laws: we can go up and out or anywhere we need. And to the casinos, the cost of a theater is, relatively, nothing."

As a result, Vegas offers technical capabilities that embarrassingly surpass those of any Broadway theater. Watching "Mystère" or "Le Rêve," you may be underwhelmed by the dramaturgy (enough with the soulful clowns already) but absolutely agape at the stagecraft. And though Mr. Dragone, the director, has announced plans to mount a spectacular, if nonoperatic, "Carmen" on Broadway in 2007, it's not clear that any Broadway theater could house or even be adapted for his sort of show.

No, what happens in Vegas will probably stay in Vegas. "Phantom" will open here with effects that would be impossible at the Majestic. "Hairspray" will get an explosive new ending. Even "Avenue Q" has a few new bells and whistles. But none of these changes will come back to New York. They can't. On the day before the first "Avenue Q" preview, Jason Moore, the director, pointed out all the backstage amenities that made the show more dynamic and the company more comfortable: lovely dressing rooms with Internet connections, wing space you can actually store a set in. Even the catwalks, Mr. Moore pointed out, are carpeted.

"In almost every way we can do things better here," he said.

There is, for instance, the case of the ceiling fan: a little visual joke Mr. Moore wanted to add to the set in New York. Mr. McCollum, the producer, said that because of what he called "idiotic" union work rules on Broadway, "it would have cost $100,000 in labor. Here it costs $28, the price of the fan. New York has some things to learn from Las Vegas."

Though the "Avenue Q" cast and crew work under union contracts, many shows here, like the Cirque productions, do not. (Nevada is a right-to-work state.) This, too, will tend to make the Broadway-Vegas traffic a one-way street. In any case, Vegas will not soon become Broadway's research and development plant, creating new product for the home office, because the Broadway stamp of success still means too much to the casinos. Nor will Vegas steal the tatty mantle of cultural hegemony from New York. Everyone here has a different formula for describing what you'll never see on the Strip: "Doubt," "Long Day's Journey Into Night," "Hecuba" with a two-drink minimum. Even a Europop version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," which played the Paris in 2000, proved too brooding.

Vegas doesn't want to brood. It wants respectability, like a real grown-up American city with suburbs and culture - but not too much. (The Boston Pops drew a skimpy audience when it played the MGM Grand.) It sees itself as a town where gambling is just another synergistic offering, like shopping, dining, spa treatments and now musicals, each feeding the others and ultimately the owners. Indeed, the visitor who comes here expressly for gaming is in the minority. "We're no longer in the casino or hospitality or tourism business," Mr. Rappaport, of the Luxor, said flatly. "Entertainment is our business."

One wonders if the same can still be said of Broadway, which looks more and more like a sclerotic real estate cartel. Vegas won't kill it (though it may kill the road, or the Western part of it) and may even be helpful: directly, by increasing profit for Broadway producers and, indirectly, by building audiences.

"There are people who come to the resorts who have never seen a show," Mr. Gill, the "Hairspray" co-producer, said. "Las Vegas has the potential to initiate them to what it means to sit in the theater." Possibly, but when they go to see "Hecuba" on Broadway, Kahlúa frozen chocolates in hand, they may be disappointed to learn that it has never actually played there.