A late afternoon posting, London time today, made later by the fact that the internet connection went down in the hotel I’m staying at in Las Vegas, the five-star Wynn, and truly one of the man-made wonders of the world. In case you think I’m obviously earning too much as a freelance journalist, I’m here as the guest of a friend; and if the luxury and attention to detail here is on an unimaginable scale - and a vivid antidote to some of the tackier pleasures of this town — it’s good to know that even here, in the lap of luxury, the laptop is at least fallible.
Wynn is, in every other way, a premium Vegas experience; I’ve just come up from the breakfast buffet (an institution in every hotel here, but the one at the Wynn is a true feast), and fortunately the internet connection has now been restored, too! (Never mind the world financial institutions crashing everywhere we look; we know the world will truly end when the internet goes down and doesn’t come back up again) So I’m back online in every sense, and my temporary sense of powerlessness has at least evaporated.
Vegas is, of course, a place of unprecedented excess - as the shows here prove, too, and keep drawing me back to this amazing town.
This is my sixth visit here since I first came here in 2000, and if a place like Wynn has upped the ante for me in terms of accommodation, since I certainly don’t live like this at home, the shows, too, are quite unlike any you will see anywhere else - even the ones you think you know (and may love) already.
Last night I went to see the Vegas version of The Phantom of the Opera again - and even the title marks it out as different, since it has re-labelled Phantom - the Las Vegas Spectacular. When I first saw it at the spectacular purpose-built opera house in the Venetian last year, I reported here that the show was interrupted by an alarm call about half an hour in, that suggested that the Opera Ghost was at work both within the show and outside it, too.
There was no such disruption last night, and the show proceeded without a hitch. In fact, apart from raising the stakes in terms of spectacle - and what a pity that Maria Bjornson, its original designer, did not live to see her amazing work re-interpreted on this scale - seeing this version straight through this time made me realise how superbly it has been crafted into a leaner, more dramatically compressed show. Shows in Vegas typically have to run around 90 minutes without an interval, so that audiences are not unduly taxed (or removed from the main business of Vegas, which is of course to spend time in the casinos). But Phantom is actually improved by being abbreviated in this way, and as I previously noted that while the press material promises that the show “includes every song from the original”, I honestly can’t say I missed anything elsewhere, either.
And then I went across the street back to the Mirage, to see Cirque du Soleil’s Beatles show Love for the third time. (One of the perks of Vegas is that, as in Edinburgh, you can do multiple shows in a single night, since they all play on different schedules, and many play twice nightly). I’ve previously blogged here about my original impressions of this astonishing show; as I said then, “Even by Cirque’s own outstanding standards of creativity and inventiveness, Love goes somewhere entirely new with something old. While jukebox compilation pop shows have rapidly become the new template for modern musicals, Cirque now create a new one both for themselves and that increasingly stale genre, by creating an impressionistic, psychedelic dance and acrobatic spectacular around the songs of the Beatles.”
But the event doesn’t start or end with the show. Pay a visit to the Revolution Lounge to become fully immersed in the Beatles ’60s experience; and Cirque are now offering a premium Tapis Rouge package that includes an open bar and snack service there before the show and a goodies bag (including the souvenir brochure, Martini glass and coasters). Vegas is full of privilege and the privileged, of course (arriving at the Wynn buffet for Sunday brunch, my guest and I brushed passed the long queue of regular customers waiting to be seated to get to the head of the line as “preferred” guests of the hotel); and initiatives like this guest package that can be bought for a price are merely an extension of it.
However, it is far from unique to Vegas - and I was astonished to note back at home when I went to see Come Dancing there the weekend before I left that they’re even offering VIP packages at this home of working class, egalitarian theatre. For £35 on weekdays, or £40 on Friday and Saturday, audience members are given a glass of champagne, free programme and poster, and further discounts off bottles of champagne or show souvenirs. I suppose you can’t blame the theatre from wanting to exploit its own revenue opportunities; but though you expect it in Vegas, I am a little troubled by its extension to Stratford East!
I am so jealous, although I have to say I think LOVE is over-rated. Ka is by far Cirque's best work.
I disagree that the Vegas 'Phantom', which I saw last year, is an improvement over the original. That the show lasts 90 minutes means that there is not sufficient time to get emotionally involved with the story and the characters, which is essentially the core of the show's appeal. It merely feels like a case of singing the numbers that everyone knows well in costume with little dramatic engagement. The truncated length also leads to a few absurdities in the plot -- since the chandelier cannot conclude the first act, The Phantom can only bring about its demise by commanding from the stage an unseen, unknown and simply non-existent entity: 'Bring down the chandelier!', which if anything borders on the sort of caricatural, campy approach to the story that the Lloyd Webber version goes against, undermining its indulgent sentimentality.