MIKE WEATHERFORD :
Cirque bringing touring show as vacation replacement for 'Ka'
It's a huge show. I like to describe it as Cirque du Soleil on steroids," says Cirque du Soleil president Daniel Lamarre.
That's how I would describe "Ka." But Lamarre is talking about "Delirium," the show that will cover for "Ka" for two of the days that show is on break, playing the MGM Grand Garden arena Sept. 8 and 9.
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"Delirium" is Cirque's first attempt at a touring arena show, something to target the market in between its "big top" titles and the permanent installations on the Strip.
While the big tops tend to park in major cities, "Delirium" plans to make 70 stops within a year, most of them in places Cirque has never been.
As for Las Vegas, "We like the idea of being there when 'Ka' is dark" twice each year, Lamarre says. To bring it back more often runs too big a risk of cannibalizing ticket sales from the permanent shows.
Lamarre says "Delirium" carries as much production equipment as recent tours by U2 and the Rolling Stones. He describes it as a little edgier, "closer to a rock concert" than what we have seen on the Strip. There are no clowns, and the show is staged on the arena floor, in the middle of the audience.
Co-creators Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon staged a huge street festival for Cirque at the Montreal International Jazz Festival two years ago. Scott Zeiger, then of Clear Channel Entertainment, was inspired by the results and coaxed the arena idea along. The show is co-produced by both Live Nation, a Clear Channel spinoff, and Base Entertainment, Zeiger's new company.
Tickets for the MGM dates are $69.50-$135 and go on sale June 10. ...
Don't be surprised to see an interactive Los Angeles dance revue, "Shag With a Twist," open at Krave nightclub in July. Details are pending, but the idea is to court the club crowd with a midnight show five nights a week. The revue is based on the retro-cool art of Shag, aka Josh Agle, and his tiki and martini-centric world. It played at the Los Angeles Theatre Center last year. ...
The Second City comedy troupe has a mostly new cast, which plans to revert from its current all-improvised format to its more traditonal mix of scripted sketches and improv.
The comic quintet is currently testing new skits in front of audiences, with the goal of having it all locked down by July 10.
The change was prompted in part by the departure of three cast members, including Seamus McCarthy, the only performer to have opened the Flamingo venture in March 2001. He went to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune in time for TV pilot season.
Cast members are said to have missed the scripted sketches, a Second City signature that inspired "Saturday Night Live," after experimenting since November with an unusual format that had a structured skeleton but no scripted material. ...
For the second time I've riled up Queen guitarist Brian May enough to make it into "Brian's Soapbox" on his Web site, brianmay.com.
This time I'm not the direct object of his scorn, unlike his reaction to my faintly-praising review of "We Will Rock You."
May saw my preview piece of another rock-themed theater piece, "Rock of Ages -- The Musical," and a comment that showed up on the The Movable Buffet, a Los Angeles Times Weblog by Richard Abowitz.
Abowitz wrote that I found it odd for Harrah's Entertainment to test-run a similar title so soon after "Rock You" closed at Paris Las Vegas, a corporate sister property.
May agreed: "Ah! What a revelation!" he wrote. "The bastards! They must have already had this thing in the planning stage ... a virtual carbon-copy (of "Rock You")."
I'm not so sure, although the timing could be read to fit May's allegation: The closing notice for "Rock You" came Nov. 2 of last year. On Nov. 29, Variety announced "Rock of Ages" would open in Los Angeles on Jan. 26, and "hope(s) for a transfer to a Las Vegas venue."
If you figure "Rock You" did at least half-capacity business in a 1,400-seat theater, then it's logical the Flamingo's president, Don Marrandino, would take interest in a similar title with a lower overhead, in a room half that size.
However, no one could have seen an actual performance to assess the quality of "Ages" before deciding whether to close the Queen musical.
Most important is that at this writing, "Rock of Ages" hasn't been guaranteed a return to the Flamingo.
May also hinted his show still has a future in Las Vegas.
When e-mailed for further comment, he shied away from specifics, but noted the failures of musicals based on the songs of Rod Stewart, Elvis Presley, Madness and John Lennon.
"Only two of the new-style shows ("Mamma Mia!" and "Rock You") seem to have legs." And since the ABBA show is pop music, his "remains the only rock-based show to knock at the gates of immortality."
