Thursday, April 14, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
MIKE WEATHERFORD: Comedy turns to serious business in new Strip festival
A new comedy festival is headed to the Strip, this one backed with serious clout and geared more to consumers than a 3-year-old festival that targets aspiring performers.
The Nov. 17-20 event, simply titled The Comedy Festival, promises more than 50 performances, events and film screenings at Caesars Palace and the Flamingo.
It will be produced by HBO as an offshoot of the cable network-funded U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo., and AEG Live, which produces Celine Dion's show in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace and most of the theater's visiting concert acts.
"I like to tell people we're trying to do the comedy Olympics," says festival chairman Bob Crestani, who also oversees the Aspen festival.
Along with the 4,000-seat Colosseum, old-school Flamingo showroom and The Second City venue , the festival will transform convention space into movie screening rooms and "really cool club settings," Crestani says.
While much of the Aspen festival is devoted to the discovery of new talent, this one is about "much bigger headliners and big shows," Crestani says. "We have to make noise in Vegas."
Because so many comedians work the Strip on a year-round basis, there will be an emphasis on TV and movie reunions and special events. "It needs to be special. It needs to be things you can't normally see," says John Meglen, president of AEG Live
He adds that the week once devoted to the Comdex computer convention was chosen deliberately. Filling the gap left by Comdex's absence will guarantee the festival won't be up against other big conventions or events. Crestani says the festival also will generate cable TV material for HBO and TBS.
"It's such a natural marriage between (HBO) being a content provider and us being a live company," Meglen notes.
The news doesn't improve the odds for the 3-year-old Las Vegas Comedy Festival produced by Mark Allen, staged last October at the Golden Nugget.
That festival met limited success as a "how to" convention for working comedians. But it has failed to catch on with the public in a big way, largely because of confusion in separating its consumer-oriented events from the trade workshops and panels.
The fall festival did lure more than 200 comedians competing for a $25,000 grand prize in a contest tied to clubs around the country. ...
"Le Reve," the new Wynn Las Vegas aquatic show from former Cirque du Soleil director Franco Dragone, will open with a uniform ticket price lower than many seats for Dragone's "O."
All seats for the new show will have a base price of $110 (before a 10 percent entertainment tax and possible service charges), versus four tiers of inclusive pricing for "O": $150 and $125 for the floor, $99 for the balcony and $93.50 for obstructed view.
The in-the-round configuration for the domed "Le Reve" theater means there will be just 14 rows of seating. Press materials say no seat will be more than 42 feet from the action. You might remember when the Dragone-directed Dion show opened at Caesars, the maximum distance to the stage was touted as 120 feet, which turned out to be a long 120 feet to the second balcony.
Credits for the aerial, video and "Clown Conceptor" (John Gilkey) support earlier reports that the revue will try to strike off from "O" by having more going on above the water in all three departments. ...
British magician Paul Daniels will fill in at Harrah's Las Vegas during Mac King's vacation Tuesday through April 23. Daniels, who turned 67 last week, isn't a household name in the United States beyond the fraternity of magicians who idolize him. But he has 40 years in the business and once worked as a featured act in the Tropicana's "Folies Bergere." ...
It turns out the Plaza is running into more obstacles than first thought in announcing a permanent showroom attraction to replace a Dick Clark-licensed revue that fell off the drawing board.
But the hotel will use the prime real estate of its scenic Center Stage restaurant for a Latin-themed club event called "Escandalos," starting Saturday night. ...
This week marks George Carlin's Stardust debut, which was delayed by his well-publicized stint in rehab last winter. It made us curious about who would take some of the weeks in the schedule once occupied by Carlin at his former haunt, the MGM Grand's Hollywood Theatre.
There is good news for at least one of the weeks. Chris Isaak, the singer-songwriter and former Showtime sitcom star, is settling in for an MGM run June 2-8. Isaak is no stranger to Las Vegas, but typically pops in for one-nighters in concert venues such as the House of Blues.
Mike Weatherford's entertainment column appears Thursdays and Sundays.
