In the last 20 years, the composition of audiences for Broadway has shifted from a third tourists (and two third metro area) to two thirds tourists (and one third metro area). These are the same vacation-goers who do a week in Vegas every year. They're not thinking about "art" or a transformative artistic experience. They want BIG entertainment -- whether it is here or Vegas.
Mamma Mia would run for the next 20 years in Vegas, if the producers of it wanted a company there (not sure why they don't or haven't). Avenue Q has a brand new, state of the art, multi-miilion dollar theatre about to open that Steve Wynn built just for them. Suzanne Somers debuted her show in Vegas to acclaim, has bookings for it all over the country, and can go back and run it there for years if she wants to.
If the producers of Good Vibrations and All Shook Up want to, the mind REELS at how many years those two shows would run in Vegas. A Beach Boys and Elvis musical that already played Broadway? There would be lines around the block and they could charge a LOT MORE than $100 for prime seats.
Face it, Broadway is a try-out for Vegas now. The stuff that's artistically innovative and challenging that opens here on commercial Broadway is dismissed by this lunkheaded set of critics we have that now can't appreciate any score more harmonically complicated than The Producers. No show that attempts to push the artform forward apparently can run more than 4 or 5 months in a commercial setting. So, Broadway has now become a try-out place for the new Vegas shows.
Can't wait till "Wayne Newton -- At Liberty" gets here.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 7/26/05 at 01:55 AM