The news is even worse. According to the Las Vegas Review Journal:
Steve Wynn was in a jousting mood over California concerns about the effects of the Las Vegas-bound “Monty Python’s Spamalot.”
“I’m in `competition’ with Los Angeles and mighty proud to say it,” Wynn said Tuesday, still basking in the glow of his latest coup, a long-term deal that keeps the Broadway hit from touring California.
“I am unabashedly a businessman,” Wynn told Review-Journal entertainment reporter Mike Weatherford by telephone Monday.
“I’m trying to give everybody a reason to leave Los Angeles and come and stay at my hotel,” said Wynn. “What I am doing is making that invitation as titillating, as scintillating and as irresistible as I can. and I intend to continue doing it. So there (laughs).”
Wynn’s deal with “Spamalot” prevents the musical from touring in California and Arizona, as well as the rest of Nevada. “Spamalot” could have a 10-year run at Wynn if a three-year option is picked up after the seventh year.
The Los Angeles Times, in an article Tuesday, said Wynn’s deal raised fears that it would “dry up prospects for Broadway tours in L.A.”
“We were hoping it would be the cornerstone of our 2007 season,” Martin Wiviott, who runs the Broadway/LA subscription series at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, told the Times.
Center Theatre Group’s new artistic director, Michael Ritchie, who had said earlier that he would book “Spamalot” into the Ahmanson Theatre “in a heartbeat,” could not be reached for comment Monday.
In Las Vegas, the so-called sit-down production of “Spamalot” will be cut from two hours, including intermission, to 90 minutes without an intermission. Such surgery is applied to many Las Vegas versions of Broadway shows, although “Avenue Q” has been spared.
Wiviott said “Spamalot” is “perfect for a Vegas audience; it’s like a big revue.” However, he predicted that shows with more complicated or more serious stories, such as “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” “The Light in the Piazza” and “Doubt,” “won’t play in Las Vegas.”
Wynn told The Associated Press the new theater for “Spamalot” will cost $50 million and that he agreed to play the show for 10 years if he picks up a three-year renewal option. Tickets will cost from $80 to $100.
Wynn Las Vegas already has another show, “Le Reve,” running, although it didn’t come from Broadway.
And, Wynn told the AP, “I’m not sure that we’re done yet.”
Sigh. This is one of those rare occasions where I don’t know what to say other than “Shit!”.
