Clear the streets of hell, that snowball's gaining speed.
Finally, Sin City is sending something back—in theory, anyway—to the Big Apple, which has stocked the Strip with about half of Broadway's inventory lately, and gotten bubkis in return. But ...
Lennon. Movin' Out. Good Vibrations.
Broadway aspiration, say howdy to Vegas inspiration:
Celine Dion's A New Day, Elton John's The Red Piano, Barry Manilow's Music and Passion.
Head to the malt shop, dig out a quarter and drop it in. These curious concoctions have earned a designation: "jukebox musicals."
So how large a creative chasm separates Vegas and Broadway these days? Thanks to these Billboard-meets-Broadway hybrids luring considerable coinage out of baby-boomer pockets at both tourist meccas, it's not nearly as wide or deep as long-standing prejudices suggest. The Les Miserables-vs.-Crazy Girls model is obviously outmoded. What's astounding is how outmoded.
That Broadway trio—celebrating a Beatle, a Piano Man and some Beach Boys—has been the most visible face of this trend back East Coast-way: shows carrying just enough production values, dramatic touches, inventive deviations and negligible narrative to justify a night of a singer or group's pre-sold hits, marketed not merely as a concert, but as Broadway theater. Not just as entertainment, but as art.
The Vegas troika—celebrating a diva, a knight and the "Jump, Shout, Boogie" man—is already all that, minus the pretensions to Broadway worthiness. But at the root, the shows on both sides of this NY/LV divide share evolutionary ties to the ol'-style Vegas "tribute show," still alive and gyrating in standard-bearers like American Superstars and Legends in Concert. For Broadway lifers already wincing at their jewels exported to this desert glam-jam they've long disdained, that's surely a debt they despise owing.
Though these stray strands of showbiz DNA have at last linked, a Broadway/Vegas crossbreeding was, until now, an unthinkable genetic match.
The Strip's egalitarian entertainment ethos, its all-for-glitz-and-glitz-for-all appeal, always contrasted Broadway's image of a street of sophisticates, the former more in it for the commerce (with any resulting "art" a pleasant bonus), the latter in it for the art (with commerce running second, hence its economic nickname, "The Fabulous Invalid").
From Vegas' viewpoint, that's undergone a philosophical overhaul in recent years, capped by the Xeroxing of Broadway favorites Avenue Q, and Mamma Mia!, with Hairspray, Spamalot and Phantom of the Opera signed, sealed and soon to be delivered, plus rumors of Movin' Out movin' in. It's admirably ambitious for a city that made its bones on more crass concerns—gambling, sex, bodies decomposing in the desert—trading up for some class diversions, courtesy of its refined, cross-country cousin.
But reversing the inspirational flow? The Great White Way taking cultural cues from the Great Neon Jungle? There isn't enough irony in a month of Letterman monologues to cover that.
At its traditional best, Broadway musicals thrive on original stories and start-from-scratch scores, songs composed to fit the characters and advance the narrative. But lately, Broadway's been infected by Vegas headliner-itis, whether the marquee-topper is a dead legend portrayed by a legion of look-alikes (Lennon); a pop prince on the outs with the DMV, his musical catalogue reinterpreted, ballet-style, by Twyla Tharp (the Billy Joel-driven Movin' Out) or the quintessential boomer band reinvented as some sort of theatrical social statement—and therefore, more respectable than an E! True Hollywood Story about Brian Wilson's breakdowns—on American music (the Beach Boys-based Good Vibrations).
True, Broadway history is scattered with musicals bolstered by ready-made tunes, battle-tested on the charts over decades—from George M! (music by George M. Cohan) through Beatlemania and The Who's Tommy, to the Gershwin-powered Crazy for You and My One and Only. But now it's as if Broadway producers raided a pop-cultural Costco, buying shows with insta-hit scores in bulk. Though Lennon and Good Vibrations were slayed, savaged by Gotham critics, jukebox musicals are still spinning their platters in a medley of boomer-nostalgia, either on Broadway, its British doppelganger, London's West End, or on numerous theatrical drawing boards of late: All Shook Up (Elvis), Tonight's the Night (Rod Stewart), The Boy From Oz (Peter Allen), Our House (ska band Madness), Jersey Boys (Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons), Colour My World (Chicago).
Oh, one more: Bob Dylan prepares to get the Billy Joel treatment when his oeuvre is Twyla-lized as a dance extravaganza in The Times They Are A-Changin'. (OK, so we don't expect Twyla to spiff up Jubilee! anytime soon. But we did host that Lord Of The Dance dude for awhile.)
Celine, Barry and Sir Elton (having already composed for Broadway), their productions in their current configurations, could easily shuttle back East, requiring maybe minimal tweaking to qualify as Broadway babies. And as long as we're horrifying the 42nd Street crowd, it's apparent that Vegas salutes to Neil Diamond, the Rat Pack, Liberace, Streisand and Sinatra could provide fertile soil from which even more Broadway bonanzas can sprout. Meanwhile, Mamma Mia!, the Great White Way's first smash jukebox musical (call it Selection A-1) of this era, running on an engine of ABBA hits, has conquered the Strip, as the Queen-flavored We Will Rock You, imported from London's West End, snubbed NY in favor of LV as its stateside home.
They're two sides of the same drachma, Broadway and Vegas—paired in the public imagination as twin titans, the greatest streets of indulgent fantasy and elaborate entertainment in the world—but known to play Dr. Heckle and Mr. Snide with each other lately, muttering mutual snipes: Vegas at Broadway for its carriage of theatrical superiority and cultural class; Broadway at Vegas for its common-denominator come-ons and outright mooching of their product.
Yet aren't we're beginning to resemble them? And aren't they're beginning to resemble us? How much more Ripley's Believe It Or Not can this get?
Well, if Cirque du Soleil overruns Broadway and a Tennessee Williams festival is booked into the MGM, run like hell: That snowball's triggered an avalanche.