How Canadians saved Vegas

Celine Dion's Vegas show A New Day filled the 4,000-seat theatre The Colosseum for 700 performers over a five-year-run.

By: Richard Ouzounian Theatre Critic

Las Vegas, 2003. A city in need of rescuing.

After 33 years of non-stop prosperity, during which the number of visitors each year grew to a high of 35 million in 2000 from a low of 6.8 million in 1970, the people had stopped coming.

In a town used to tourism growth of 10 to 20 per cent a year, the freeze was causing panic in the hearts and the pocketbooks of the moguls behind the half dozen major new hotels under construction, and Michelin-star chefs opening new restaurants.

Sin City needed saving. Enter the Canadians: the formidable trifecta of Celine Dion, Cirque du Soleil and Shania Twain.

March 25 marked the 10th anniversary of the opening of The Colosseum, the 4,000-seat flagship theatre in Caesars Palace built especially for Dion. It is on that stage that the Quebec native kick-started Vegas’ turnaround, bringing the people back who had stopped coming after 9/11 but also because of the entertainment.

Back then there was a growing sense among the city’s movers and shakers that the entertainment scene had become “been there, done that.” Vegas is known as much for its good entertainment as its gambling. Tourists expect star-studded, spectacular shows.

In early 2003, there were only two Cirque du Soleil shows in operation (Mystere and O). The biggest showroom act belonged to Siegfried and Roy, the Teutonic lion tamers whose show was in its 13th year (it would close later that year when one the show’s tigers mauled Roy.)

Something new was needed. Something big. A performer whose appeal cut across all borders.

Celine Dion.

When Caesars Palace announced its plans, counting on Dion to fill 4,000 seats at every performance, the skeptics went wild. Even Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, at the peaks of their fame, couldn’t generate audiences like that.

But the naysayers were wrong. Dion opened to a tremendous advance sale and the proposed two-year run soon stretched to five. In the end, her show, A New Day, played 700 performances to more than three million spectators for a gross in excess of $400 million (U.S.). (Her second show, Celine, opened at The Colosseum in 2011 and is continuing to break box office records.)

It now all sounds triumphant, but Dion recently told the Star by email that the epic opening night was nearly a fiasco.

“Somehow, during a costume change, my shoes went missing. It was like; do I leave the audience waiting, or do go out in my bare feet? You can’t keep the people waiting, especially on opening night, so I started the song shoeless … and just as I was starting to sing, my brother Michel came on stage with the missing shoes! I think that moment set the tone for every show since then. We’re ‘live’ and that means no show is ever exactly the same as another.”

While Dion was working her magic, Montreal’s Cirque du Soleil started its campaign of expansion, opening six new shows in 10 years, all of them (with the exception of the ill-fated Viva Elvis!) successful and still running at specially-built theatres at major hotels throughout the city.

Their X-rated Zumanity, Robert Lepage’s epic martial arts saga, Ka, and The Beatles tribute, Love, all rang the bell at the box office, resulting in more than 40 million tickets to Cirque shows being sold in the last decade, said Cara Abrahams, the director of public relations for Cirque’s resident shows.

Jordan Fiksenbaum, vice-president of marketing and public relations for Cirque’s resident shows in North America, attributes the sudden burst of activity to a new partnership with MGM Resorts International.

Their desire, he said, to add new theatres and work with us “gave us the creative challenge and provided up an opportunity to expand at just the right time.”

Cirque has succeeded in Vegas because its shows take the “audience on a journey unlike any other live entertainment show,” Fiksenbaum said.

“The uniqueness and quality of each production is what our customers return for, year after year.”

The hat-trick in the Canadian Vegas game goes to Timmons, Ont., native Shania Twain, who opened her residency at The Colosseum in December. She is sharing top-billing with other big name acts while Celine is on a break until September.

John Meglen, the president and co-CEO of Concerts West/AEG Live, is the force behind both Dion and Twain’s appearances in Vegas. He calls Twain’s impact so far “tremendous.”

“She sold out her first two batches of shows totally and the advance for the future is great,” Meglen said. “She’s got an intimacy and a vulnerability that makes you forget you’re seeing her in a 4,000-seat venue.”

Along with the Canadian talent influx, Meglen also gives credit for the city’s turnaround to influences such as master hotel-meister Steve Wynn, who placed a strong quality imprint on his signatures hotels like the Bellagio and Wynn Las Vegas, while making “the town got hip again.”

The tourism count for 2012 came in just under 40 million visitors, an increase of 15 per cent since Dion and her Canuck cohorts raised the entertainment bar so high.

Sure, what happens in Vegas may still stay in Vegas, but the chances are that it probably started in Canada.