As the reviews trickle in from Saturday night’s Las Vegas premiere of Michael Jackson The IMMORTAL World Tour™ we may be seeing an inversion of the Viva Elvis™ phenomenon. In the latter instance, the out-of-towners raved and local critics yawned. In the case of Jackson, the in-Vegas verdict is pretty favorable, even rhapsodic (to say nothing of some predictable sycophancy), with Mike Weatherford‘s measured critique in the Las Vegas Review-Journal making particularly enlightening reading. The heavy (heavier than usual?) dose of pre-opening coverage in the dailies was notable for its undertone of desperation. Its bottom line: We need Cirque to succeed this time.
After being thoroughly flogged for Criss Angel vehicle Believe™ and given an eviction notice for Viva Elvis™, Cirque has evidently been sufficiently humbled and is due for the forgiveness portion of the Judeo-Christian fall-and-redemption arc that American show-biz media love so dearly. Even so, the feverish atmosphere that preceded and followed the Montreal premiere was not to be seen, heard or felt last Saturday night. Or, if it was present, it was dissipated by the galactic vastness of the venue.
Reviews of Jackson at barn-like Mandalay Bay Event Center are somewhat provisional, given that Cirque has 15-18 months to prune the production for the showroom which currently plays host to The Lion King, facing extinction at year’s end. The current iteration will be going back on the road next month and the out-of-town critics haven’t been rolling out a carpet of plaudits for the tour. Measuring Jackson against Love™, the Los Angeles Times’ Randall Roberts is unimpressed: “a two-dimensional mixtape that, were it relocated to a hockey arena, could be easily adapted as ‘Michael Jackson on Ice.'” (In what Sue Lowden calls “the olden days,” Steve Friess would be doing this media overview — and much more incisively — but S&G will probably have to suffice.)
That’s one of the nicer things Roberts had to say. Equally nonplussed was the Toronto Globe & Mail, which described Jackson the spectacle in terms that might have applied to Jackson the person: “It’s rub-your-eyes, pinch-yourself, drop-your-jaw bizarre.”
Vegas spectators were lucky: They were spared the long, pre-show delay and technical snafus that marred the Pacific Northwest leg of the tour. The Seattle Times found it a scattered, “exhausting spectacle.” Willamette Week unpacked perhaps the most damning adjective possible: “boring.” Given the intricacy of Cirque’s staging and multimedia elements, the tour schedule looks not just optimistic but downright hectic. In its hurry to cash in on posthumous Jackson mania, Cirque may be setting itself up to fail. This isn’t your standard bus-and-truck show, after all. Also, what could plausibly sell out 1,600-seat Vegas theaters on a regular basis doesn’t necessarily fill multi-thousand-seat sports arenas several nights in succession. Has the drawing power of an high-end touring show, in parlous economic days, been overestimated?
There’s plenty of time for Cirque to fine-tune its resident version of Jackson, due no later than mid-2o13. However, unless some “fixations” are made to the touring version during its MBay stopover, the road company could find itself in the ditch long before its final destination — Salt Lake City — appears on the horizon next August.
