Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Four years after a mind-blowing opening, ‘Phantom - Las Vegas Spectacular’ faces an uncertain future

<em>Phantom</em>'s 4th Anniversary at The Venetian

Denise Truscello/WireImage

Phantom — the Las Vegas Spectacular‘s fourth anniversary at The Venetian on June 24, 2010.

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Andrew Ragone (Raoul), Kristi Holden (Christine) and Anthony Crivello (The Phantom) celebrate Phantom -- the Las Vegas Spectacular's fourth anniversary at The Venetian on June 24, 2010.

Phantom - Las Vegas Spectacular

On the rooftop, Andrew Ragone as Raoul and Kristi Holden as Christine during Launch slideshow »

Recently Kelly Clinton told me a story about the night she met Carol Burnett. Clinton has been an entertainer in Las Vegas for decades and currently organizes and headlines performances at Stirling Club at Turnberry Place. For years she's put on open-mic shows at Bootlegger Bistro, where patrons are served pasta from the kitchen and ham from the stage.

Clinton met Burnett four years ago. It was a chilling moment for Clinton, as she was meeting one of her idols, and you get goose bumps when she talks of that night.

Clinton walked over to one of these extra-VIP areas, a mysteriously darkened concave rimmed by velvet ropes hooked to brass polls and manned by bulky securities guys intoxicated with authority. But after a long wait on the perimeter, Clinton was allowed entrance to this safe haven. She took a breath — Clinton is known to lose track of her syntax and start speaking in Klingon in these instances — and leaned down to Burnett, who was seated as if royalty.

"You are the reason I am an entertainer," Clinton said to Burnett. At this, Burnett's eyes filled with tears. She reached up and pulled Clinton's cheek to her own and whispered only, "Thank you."

It's important to put this moment in context. It happened during one of the great gala events over the last decade in Las Vegas, the opening-night party for "Phantom — Las Vegas Spectacular" at The Venetian. The legendary Burnett isn't exactly a Las Vegas scenester, hardly the type to make an appearance at a late-night party in a Strip resort ballroom. But as a longtime friend of the similarly legendary "Phantom" producer Hal Prince, she showed up as a show of support and caused quite a ripple.

As "Phantom" celebrated its fourth anniversary Thursday, I remembered that party. What a night. We had two Phantoms in attendance, current lead Anthony Crivello and the man with whom he shared the spotlight, Brent Barrett. The production's 10-show-a-week schedule was too demanding for the three lead characters (Phantom, Christine and Carlotta) and Crivello won an opening-night coin toss to perform in the premiere.

The talk around the lavishly arrayed ballroom was that the slimmed-down and stepped-up $40 million production would remain in Vegas indefinitely. One person who is an expert in Las Vegas productions pulled me aside and said, "I haven't said this about many shows, but this is going to be here for a very long time."

Will it? Four years later Crivello stands as the lone Phantom. The accompanying anniversary demarcation was not a celebratory party, but a photo of everyone in the theater wearing paper masks in what was billed as the largest gathering of Phantoms in history. The second-largest probably was that opening party.

Maybe, four years on, this show has simply played out. There is talk, and at least one published report, that the Phantom might soon soar from Las Vegas forever. If so, it would depart having made an indelible mark on Strip entertainment as a uniquely Vegas-ized theater experience.

As Burnett said that night in 2006, when I finally reached her to ask what she thought of the show: "It blew my mind."

There might not be any higher praise. Four years of mind-blowing spectacle. It's terrific praise, and those masked fans celebrating the "Phantom's" Vegas birthday hope it's not an epitaph.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats.

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