Las Vegas Spotlight: May 2006
The big production at the Community College of Southern Nevada Performing Arts Center this month is going to be Stephen King’s Misery, adapted for the stage by Simon Moore. King’s 1987 novel — and the memorable film version starring Kathy Bates and James Caan — is about a famous writer who gets in a car accident and then finds himself under the care of a deranged fan. Performances start on May 19 and the show goes on through June 4.
Also at CCSN, for one night only on May 12, Marilyn Mayblum presents her autobiographical Thursday Nite in Baghdad. In it, Mayblum recounts her experience producing and performing in a Las Vegas revue at a music hall in Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. This is sure to be a fascinating and illuminating performance.
James Sherman’s comedy Jest a Second, playing May 5-21, closes out the Las Vegas Little Theatre’s 2005-2006 season on the Main Stage. The companion piece to the playwright’s comedy Beau Jest, which opened the season last fall, Jest a Second! is also a warm-hearted farce about the Goldman family. Meanwhile, in the Fischer Black Box from May 12-21 is Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9. Probably the dramatist’s best-known play, Cloud 9 uses some very unusual casting to examine feminism and racial issues in colonial Africa and post-Sexual Revolution Britain.
From Stage Door Entertainment comes The Complete History of America (Abridged), created by the wacky folks at the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Advertised as “600 years in under 6000 seconds!” this zany history lesson will be on view from May 12-28 (with one preview performance on May 11) at the Summerlin Library Performing Arts Center.
A couple of announcements came down the pipeline recently regarding big summer entertainment on the Las Vegas Strip. The first is that The Producers will be opening for a run at the Paris Resort Hotel and Casino’s Theatre des Arts later this summer in the now-standard 90-minute format. Susan Stroman will be helming this new Vegas version of Mel Brooks’ monster smash hit, but no word yet on exactly how the two-and-a-half hour tuner will be cut down to size.
And guess who is going to have a brand new show in town? Cirque du Soleil. Perhaps you’ve heard of them? In what is getting to be a yearly event, Cirque will be opening its latest extravaganza, LOVE, at a theater built specifically for the show, this time at the Mirage Hotel and Casino. LOVE, which officially opens on June 30, will be a celebration of the music of The Beatles, with musical direction by the legendary band’s original producer, George Martin, and his son Giles.
