2. Cirque du Soleil, "Love":
#2 is the entrance area. That's just some lady posing for someone else's picture, not a Cirque du Soleil performer. You can't take pictures inside that show, and how incredibly annoying people would be if you could. But at Murray's show, we were encouraged to take photographs. The small shows, I take it, are hoping for a social media lift. We saw a third small show, Gordie Brown, and you could take pictures but I never felt moved to do so. Murray's small-time stage seemed deliberately sadly bad, and I got a pleasurable Neil-Hamburger-ish vibe from the thing. Even though the magic tricks worked, the patter tended to circle around the idea that the audience wasn't paying attention and might be asleep or dumb. That's something comedians in small clubs have done forever. As for Gordie Brown, he tended to mock himself when we didn't laugh enough. Maybe it was because he was doing impersonations of celebrities from long ago — Katharine Hepburn, Sammy Davis Jr., The Bee Gees — and he genuinely worried that the audience was too young to know them. Maybe he felt sheepish about the empty seats in the audience. All the seats were filled at Murray's show, including the 4 seats my group filled for free, having scored tickets through a seat-filling scheme that local residents like my brother can tap into.
ADDED: I was going to say there was nothing special about the visual experience of Gordie Brown's show, and that's why I don't have a photograph. But there was. It was just too hard to capture. He was excellent at making his face look like the person he was imitating. This was one reason he spent so much time on Sammy Davis. He really nailed that blind-in-one-eye look.
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"This was one reason he spent so much time on Sammy Davis. He really nailed that blind-in-one-eye look."
I bet his Peter Falk was wonderful.
I am Laslo.
"I was going to say there was nothing special about the visual experience of Gordie Brown's show, and that's why I don't have a photograph."
That there are no photos is because the story of attending Gordie Brown's show was a front, to hide the time Althouse spent at the Male Strip Club Revue.
Those are the Secret Photos.
I am Laslo.
"...to hide the time Althouse spent at the Male Strip Club Revue."
A hundred dollars in ones can go pretty fast, right Professor?
I am Laslo.
Brown also spent a lot of time on Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, virtually entirely about the hilarity of blindness.
Wow!
I'm glad you were able to see a couple of shows. In my mind, that's the only reason to go to Vegas.
Although....I also enjoy eye-balling the females at the swimming pool. I'm told that when you stop looking, you're dead.
Brown was good at getting the voices of a lot of different singers. My favorite part of his show was about The Bee Gees. He did "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" with great emphasis on the differences in the voices of the three singers. That was done with nice musical accuracy and good comedy.
But there was a lot of low humor too. Not just the blindness but also many jokes about penises, including repeating over and over a joke about how viagra worked as a "kickstand" to keep an old man from rolling out of bed. The old man was Henry Fonda in "On Golden Pond," with the Katharine Hepburn voice used to talk about erections.
It is nice seeing you do things outside your "normal" routine.
I love my normal routine but I have made myself do activities that I would normally not do and I have enjoyed them.
tits.
Hepburn, Sammy Davis, the Bee Gee, Ray Charles, Henry Fonda?
So, his act is 30 years out of date....
Nope. It's dead on schedule. It's Vegas.
I actually worked on Gordie Brown's show twice back in the late 80s. It's funny that his act hasn't changed that much. The thing about him that impressed me about him was his "physicalization" (as we used to say in acting class) of the characters he was impersonating. He really worked hard to pinpoint the physical quirks of the way some celebrities moved and exaggerate that for comic effect. I remember when he did Geraldo Rivera, he would stand very tall and move his shoulders and head from side to side with an odd rhythm and then suddenly center himself. I don't recall ever seeing Geraldo actually doing that, but when Gordie did it, it just screamed Geraldo.
Brown's show sounds almost heart-breakingly sad. A true master, but master of something no one cares about anymore. He could be one of Broadway Danny Rose's clients.
@Ann, I hope you enjoyed Cirque, though "Love" is my least favorite of them all. Probably the Beatles thing drove you there - I'm not a terrific fan, so maybe that is why I've never repeated.
Next time you're there, would suggest KA at the MGM. It's the oldest Cirque and some of the better aspects (IMHO) have not been successfully copied in the newer ones, probably due to cost/complexity. Opt for the second-from-best seats, the upgrade isn't worth the money.
If you have money for the best seats, Zumanity at New York New York. Shivers all show, really fantastic art, and the performers are very very close up.
If you have a young person or a non-theater lover, then O at the Bellagio. That damn ship is the star of the show and the humans just dance on it. I like it but haven't been driven to see it a third time.
I'll also note that the off-broadway "trials" they run can be quite good at very reasonable prices. And because it's Vegas - cheap and good booze at intermission.
-XC
Hard to believe O is still at the Bellagio- I saw it in 2003! Loved it!
So how was "Love"? It's been out almost ten years now, so I suppose you could experience it clearly - without the hype.
This made me think how much things have changed. Last time I was in Vegas I saw, Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine and Engelbert Humperdinck.
I've seen "Love" twice. Good show, somewhat different from the other Cirque shows in that it's somewhat less circusy and has more going on at the same time on stage.
Next time you're there, would suggest KA at the MGM. It's the oldest Cirque and some of the better aspects (IMHO) have not been successfully copied in the newer ones, probably due to cost/complexity.
I think the first permanent Cirque show in Vegas was "Mystere" at TI. It had the first purpose built theatre, done when Wynn built the place. IIRC, they had "Saltimbanco" or one of the other traveling shows at the Mirage for a year or so while TI was being built.
Murray Sawchuck? Does he play goal?
Can't find your TSA post mourning post-America so I'm sticking this link in here.
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/17/feds-spent-160-million-on-body-scanners-that-dont-work-and-everyone-hates/
@edmund - you are right about Mystere. I'd forgotten!
-XC
Another vote for KA at the MGM. Fantastic.
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