Jubilee - Revisisted

Jubliee at Bally's

On Thursday night we went to see the revamped Jubilee show at Ballys.  Jubilee is the last surviving Showgirl show in Las Vegas. Beautiful, topless girls.  Extravagant costumes with feathers and  jewels.  The girls and Jubilee are Las Vegas history and a large part of why the city was called the entertainment Capital of the World.  The millennial version of showgirls in Las Vegas are the acrobats in the Circ shows.  Extravagant costumes but circus acts.

In Friday's issue of Neon, the entertainment section of the Las Vegas Review Journal, Mike Weatherford reviewed the show.  It's always nice to find someone, especially  a venerable entertainment reporter like Weatherford, who agrees with all of your opinions. 

Frank Gaston, Jr., hired to revamp the show, may be a good choreographer and know the current version of a rock and roll show (he worked for Beyonce), but he does not understand putting on a major production show like Jubilee.

Only the last ten or fifteen minutes and a couple of numbers during the show were reminiscent of spectacular cabaret show glory.   

Both Weatherford and the friend I saw the show with, himself a choreographer of the highest standing, objected to the opening of the show when the star slides down a pole.  They both saw it as her sliding down a Stripper pole.  I did not.  I saw it as pure circus!  The stage is dark.  The spotlight snaps on and there is the star.  She does not slide down the pole like a fireman nor does she work it like a stripper.  She comes down like a well trained "bally broad" (a circus term for the girls who work above the ring, performing a ballet on the ropes). It was, in fact, one of my favorite parts of the show.  However, it all went into the toilet almost immediately.

The opening number was beautiful, although, I do not understand topless dancers in 2014, when you can see your favorite reality start or rock and roll performer naked or near naked anywhere on the internet, in their shows or on television.  I found the topless girls shocking when I first saw the show thirty years ago.  I find them distracting today.  The show is (or should be) spectacular enough not to need such nonsense.  I'd much rather be wondering where I could a fancy, jeweled bra than wondering if the dancer had breast implants or thinking she needs them.  

The narration throughout the beginning of the show makes little sense.  While the narrator is adequate, she sounds bored or bewildered by the whole thing.  In the beginning it seems that she it talking about the show Jubilee being revamped. In the second half of the narration you begin to realize she is talking about the star and finally, way too late in the story, the star is given a name - Katherine Jubilee.  Then, suddenly, the whole narration ends, and we finally get a show.

At one point the stage is completely vacant.  The action takes place overhead where half of the people in the audience can't see it.  I watched the people in front of me stare at the stage and begin to get antsy because nothing was happening in front of them for such a long period of time.  

The lighting for many of the numbers was horrible.  You can't enjoy something you can't see.  There was a raincoat and umbrella number with three male dancers that was good - except the lighting was so poor you had to struggle to see it . . . and it was completely out of place with the rest of the show. However, the dancers were excellent as was the choreography.

There was a long number that reminded me of an average "Platters/Coasters/Marvellettes" show, a little 50's walk down memory lane that has been on the Strip for close to twenty years. It was a boring, average few minutes that had no place in show like Jubilee.  It might have worked if the performers had Broadway stage presence.  They didn't.

All in all, the revamp of Jubilee was disappointing and needs a second re-do ASAP.  I went from wondering what the disconnected narration was about to looking at a blank stage to being bored with the 50's "stuff," to the lack of energy in the revamped Titanic number except for the last dance sequence, to wondering why the umbrella number was in the show and why I couldn't see it without straining, to - at last - the excitement and costumes of the showgirls in the finale.  Spectacular, spectacular costumes.  Thankfully, Gaston left that part of the show intact because the finale alone is worth the price of the ticket.