B E T T E , B A B Y !
mudcub, Jeremy (from London), and
sfogreekbear showing off our tickets to see Bette while in Vegas. She alternates with Cher and Elton John in the
HUGE Colosseum theater at Caesar’s Palace that Celine “This Song Will Go On and On ” Dion opened a few years ago.
I winced a little bit at the ticket prices ($170-250, plus fees) – Vegas has ways of separating you from your money whether you gamble or not – but after seeing the show all I can say is you get your money’s worth! We had great center orchestra seats thanks to
sfogreekbear’s early-alert work. Bette gives it her all for a 95-minute, no-intermission extravaganza.
The theater is huge, with the stage at least a city block wide (she actually jokes about working it, and has her Harlettes bring out a red lips-shaped couch for them to push her back and forth on). The show is the best of an IMAX movie, a Broadway show, a showgirl show, and a concert all together, with more lavish production values than anything you’ve likely seen. She has a 14-piece band, her Harlettes, and her 17 “Caesar Salad” showgirl dancers. The backdrop is a digital screen about the size of the largest two IMAX screens put together, which allows them to do all sorts of wonderful effects, although there’s plenty of sets (rising pneumatically from beneath the stage), scrims, and gold-coin curtains as well.
It would be hard to choose a favorite number, although it might be the big Delores Delago (“The Toast of Chicago”) production number. Delores is the mermaid lounge act with more ambition than talent who has to get around the stage in a motorized wheelchair when she’s not flopping around, and they had her Harlettes and all 17 showgirls in mermaid tails and motorized wheelchairs as well (with clever and delightful choreography in them by Tony Basil) in a tasteless melee that both scrapes the bottom and goes over the top. And they don’t cheat on the mermaid costumes, either, with the feet hidden behind the fin – they’re all squeezed into form-fitting tails, and have to hop around on stage. But perhaps even better was her Soph segment (who’s now 93, the “World’s Oldest Showgirl”) with all the Soph jokes in the extended “Pretty Legs, Great Big Knockers” number.
And she’s still got ’em, as well as an amazing voice. Not bad for a broad who’s now 63.
