What went wrong with Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis show?

What went wrong with Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis show at the Aria? Just about everything, according to local gaming industry insiders who know a thing or two about the entertainment business.

It’s difficult to imagine a multimillion-dollar Elvis show not doing very well in Las Vegas. His concerts were a travel destination in themselves during the 1970s when he was regularly filling the showroom at the Las Vegas Hilton.

But that was then and here we are some 35 years after his death. All those years seemed to give Cirque’s big thinkers the feeling that the time was right for the company’s own interpretation of Presley’s music.

"Elvis was a show without heart, a lot of talent but no heart," says Minnie Madden, a Las Vegas-based producer, director and critic who now writes and talks about the business where she has made her living for a number of years.

"When you’re doing a show about someone as iconic as Elvis, people want to see the performer they loved," she said.

Another Las Vegan, an unhappy but devout Presley fan who saw the show shortly after it opened, appeared to echo this thinking. He remembers turning to a friend and saying, "There are only three things wrong with it– the music, the scenery and the dialogue. Other than that it is not bad."

Conclusions like that are highly subjective, but since the show is headed for closure by the end of 2012, they have become food for some serious thought.

Why did Viva Elvis fail to sell a satisfactory volume of tickets and is there any chance that it might still be saved, given the fact that its scheduled closing is about a year away?

An Elvis insider – he is familiar with efforts to repair the production – told me, "They should not have jacked around with the music the way they did. They should have handled it as they did the Beatles music in the show at The Mirage where the music was allowed to speak for itself."

He added, "A lot of what ended up in the show had nothing to do with Elvis’ music as he performed it and his life as he lived it. That was a mistake. There was too much poetic license with important facts. Portraying Colonel Parker as an old time southern carny type was nothing other than ridiculous. The colonel didn’t talk that way, he was from Belgium."

And then there was the matter of timing, as other sources noted. Many of the "The King’s" most ardent fans are well past middle age now. They don’t get out now the way they once did.

So why isn’t the show being allowed to limp along as further adjustments are made in the hopes they will produce a positive difference? Big entertainment productions are swing shift drivers at major Las Vegas Strip resorts. They bring in the customers who fill the restaurants, bars, shops and the casino.

The result is perfect harmony when it all works, but when a major showroom production does not pull its weight, something has to go.

That something, in this case, is Viva Elvis.

Several local gaming industry professionals think it might have generated more ticket sales had it been at another of the MGM properties – maybe The Mirage or TI, resorts that offer easier access.

Steve Wynn has had as much success as anyone, creating Strip showroom productions that were huge hits, but he also considers entertainment to be the "big white knuckle moment" in the creation of a resort.

Wynn enjoyed big successes with Siegfried and Roy at The Mirage, O at Bellagio and the first Cirque show which is still at the TI, but Le Reve at the Wynn required a good bit of tinkering or fine tuning before it began to gain satisfactory momentum.

by Phil Hevener/Gaming Insider