First the good news, most of the scenes and dances and all of the costumes you remember are still there. And if you've never seen Jubilee (at Bally's Las Vegas) before, you should go -- it is the only full on old style Vegas review with about 100 beautiful girls in those legendary skimpy Vegas costumes with feathers and sometimes there is topless nudity in totally good taste. Even if you've seen the show before, you will enjoy it, though (like my party of four) you will scratch your head as to why they changed it the way they did.
The better news, they are re-revising it, and you can hope someone smarter works on it soon.
If something isn't really broke but you want to "fix" (or in this case presumably update it), don't fix it badly. Unfortunately the bad news is that someone did a bad fix, making the show worse than before. Apparently the doofus in charge of changing things didn't quite understand the whole major point of the show -- it is a visually stunning spectacular with singing and dancing showgirls (and some showguys). And it was a happy show -- viewers sat stunned and delighted and left smiling. So the first thing someone shouldn't do is put any downers into a show like that. Secondly, it isn't the sort of show where you want performers to suddenly say to the audience things like "clap your hands" or "do you like the show" , or divide the audience into halves to sing out lyrics. This sort of show is automatically liked by the audience, they have liked it for 20 or something years, you don't need to ask them. And they don't want to stop and clap -- they just want to sit back and enjoy the spectacle.
Now my guess is that the new guy wanted to make the various well known set-pieces fit into the whole better because it could be jarring to transition from Gershwin suddenly to Samson and Delilah, or to the Titanic sinking. But the problem is that he came up with a weird concept to try to integrate these into the whole. A concept or plot or device to try to integrate all the numbers together is a good idea. But a bad concept ends up making the whole show more disjointed than ever. The plot device used is that a showgirl (Miss Jubilee) gets depressed and goes time traveling and somehow learns her lesson and comes back to the present. But the number where voices tell her she is too skinny and can't dance and is basically wasting her life as a showgirl is a total downer and gives the show a wrench into confusion that is hard to overcome. It is especially confusing as Miss J wanders distraught through the set piece of Samson -- couldn't they even give her a costume and a bit role as a slave girl waving a fan? Finally she comes back to the present, apparently our time travel is over about half way through the show, but then more numbers occur that are typical of 1930s musicals, like "Puttin in the Ritz" and "It's Gershwin". So the audience is even more confused -- why is the "plot" over midway and why are we traveling musically back and forth to and from the past?
As I watched the show the writer in me (I've had published 3 science fiction novels. I'm a novel writer, thus my long-winded reviews and reports. Sorry.) immediately came up with 3 ways to much better integrate all the musical numbers together in a better fashion than this.
Here's my best 5 minutes of thought way to fix the show -- delete all the stuff about Miss Jubilee, and then put the numbers in musical chronological order except for the first. Start with the first "beautiful girls" costume spectacular number. Then ring up the curtain, leave one performer behind and have a crew member come out with a broom as though the whole show just ended. He says "Miss Julie, that was a great performance of Jubilee tonight." She says "Thank you, but you know last night I had a weird dream that I was going through time and the whole cast of Jubilee was with me." He says "How was it?" She replies, "Beautiful...." Curtain up and the earliest music number comes up (Samson...with a few changes so they can make the costume changes). Then comes the next chronological number etc., and at the end add in some new music like Beyoncé or other well known artists, with the big finish.... (Or just have some stagehand fall asleep and dream a song about traveling through time....and at the end he whirls pops up and wakes up in time to join the final song. Woops that's idea #4 for fixing the show....)
But back to the real way they changed it. One good thing, they've added more black performers than I remember, something that should have been done awhile ago.
Some of the music is more modern, a good idea, and supposedly the point of the refit, but they are not any well known pop tunes. I was surprised they didn't use pop hits which would have been better.
For a supposedly updated show, the show has some strangely dated references, for example the announcer refers to Miss jubilee as prettier and better than people like Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly etc-- how about some using some current stars? The whole Miss Jubilee thing is just plain bad, and needs to be removed. The numbers after her time travel are good but seem to come in a disjointed non-flowing way.
A new Michael Jacksonish number has been added which is good, but this is where they try to get the audience to join in, which didn't work at all, and disrupts the flow of the show, such as it is. Also, they should pay the royalties and use a well known Jackson song like Billie Jean, or a well-known rap song.
So all in all, a mixed bag. We were still wowed by the costumes and the showgirls and guys (note to person redoing show -- take off their shirts more). The dancers are great, the showgirls are great, the singers are fine. The music though and some singing seemed canned - if there is a real orchestra, I'd like to see it or some members show up, if not, try to disguise this more. Thank goodness many of the numbers are still there, a few with changes but the basics of what made this show a must see remain. It shouldn't be hard to remix and refix this show quickly.
If I were them I would do a fast quick fix temporarily and cut all the Miss J stuff... Maybe with an announcer saying as the Wiz song is sung "one night a showgirl fell asleep and her mind wandered through space and time..." Have her fall asleep, spin her around, and Samson and the rest of the show goes on, but she never shows up again as a separate character.
Then do the real refix fix later. But soon....please....
Posted by: Misscraps <misscraps@aol.com>
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