Vol. 4, No. 4, April 2008
RSS Feeds
Bits and Pieces…
Hooray for Tina Walsh, the brilliant actress who opened Mamma Mia! in Vegas, then left because of personal reasons after two years and spent the next three years being rejected for roles in Spamalot, The Producers and Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular. It seems the “Phantom” folks have gotten over their anti-Vegas-talent bias and finally hired her to play Madame Giry. Brava!… It’s ironic that I got to break that arts piece in the Times because, days earlier, a very arrogant theater critic named Charles Isherwood reviewed the Bette Midler show. He seemed to love the show but offered the predictably obnoxious assessment of Vegas as “a steroidal temple of tackiness.” How sad for him that someday he’ll have to come here to see some of the world’s greatest artwork, huh?… Elton John’s contract at the Colosseum is over next year and, if his comments on Larry King Live are any indication, he’s unlikely to renew. Elton commented that for his 60th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden, he played 3.5 hours and in other concert venues he plays 2.5 hours and loves it. Then he said something like: “Then I’ll be at Caesars Palace in Vegas where I do a 90-minute show and half way through I’ll be like, ‘When is this over?’” … Hard not to adore Rep. Shelley Berkley, the congresswoman who represents the Strip. The former casino cocktail waitress is brassy and bold, as proved by her latest campaign logo. It shows her in a short red dress, leggy legs crossed, atop the Fabulous Las Vegas sign. Her campaign website does that one better; the cursor is followed around by an icon of a red high-heel shoe.
