The Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Sunday, July 08, 2007

ARTS and ENTERTAINMENT

Puttin' on the Glitz: Las Vegas theater scene embraces the big, the brief and the beautiful

None of these [other Vegas shows] are designed to travel. But I did see a Vegas original that might be a precursor of show-biz export: "Just Another Man." A biographical musical by, about and starring popular Vegas entertainer Clint Holmes, it has every intention of going eventually to London, Broadway or Pittsburgh.

This may not be the show that turns the trick, but its existence is a reminder that Vegas is a fast growing city of more than 2 million inhabitants, with a small but growing off-Strip theater culture that I never really saw on this visit but which is said to have promise.

So is Vegas the new Broadway? No, of course not. But thanks to its unlikely alliance with Cirque, it's a vibrant, well-financed alternative to Broadway, a place you need to visit to see the new directions (and technology) that the Barnums of entertainment have devised.

But is it really theater, or just bread and circuses? (Make that bling and Cirque.) To those who deny it's theater, I remind them of the theatrical grandiosity associated with Ziegfeld, of Victorian melodrama, complete with lavish stage effects, or of the heroic extravaganzas of Christopher Marlowe. Dragone and Cirque lack Marlowe's mighty verbal line, but they have their own stunning poetry -- visual, musical and kinetic.

Look ahead and imagine Vegas' future, beyond the next wave of spectaculars. It's a city of performers with little to do when not on stage. Every other city with big established theaters and a performing pool has developed an alternative theater scene out of which experiment and creation arise. "Top down" isn't the only creative model. Why should Vegas be different?
t.
 

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