Vegas diva obsession: Stalker creepy? Or continuing a grand tradition?
I’m teetering between diva-licious and diva-done with it.
A recent bombardment of bedazzlement has me blinded by the rhinestone light, wondering: Is Las Vegas rushing too quickly back to a more laughable era? Or is it just clinging to one thing it’s been uniquely good at over the years?
Either way, it seems as if the Strip is brimming with over-the-top pop. A Diana Ross run at The Venetian, followed by Mariah Carey’s debut in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Next year brings us Jennifer Lopez.
During the months of speculation about when J-Lo would launch a new diva showcase on the Strip, the one thing nobody bothered to ask was, why?
This weekend, Las Vegas was to be revisited by Bette Midler, one of the greats when it comes to balancing an outsized presentation with a wit that brings it down to earth. Midler makes it seem so easy, she had me wondering why I didn’t know whether to laugh with or at the sight of Mariah and Shania getting hoisted up by chorus boys.
So I called a couple of experts. One is “Divas Las Vegas” drag star Frank Marino, a longstanding go-to guy for the D-word. The other is Tim Tucker, a freshly minted expert after the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Doug Elfman brought him to Carey’s show to dissect it for an enlightening installment of Elfman’s podcast.
“The thing for me that defines a diva is your ability to get there to the top and your ability to sustain it with grace,” says Tucker, an actor and entertainer whose credits include the Las Vegas cast of “Mamma Mia!” and so many productions of “42nd Street” that he says he didn’t put them all on his resume.
“The smart ones manage to reinvent themselves in a way that’s appropriate to the age she is,” he adds. Madonna was the master of that, at least until this year’s “Rebel Heart” album cast doubt upon her long-admired knack for reinvention. (She still has a chance to set the record straight when the tour visits Oct. 24.)
Tucker thought Carey is in an awkward place between concert star and entertainer.
“Every time she spoke it made me uncomfortable, because I felt like she’s uncomfortable speaking in front of her fans,” he says. “She’s extremely talented but in my book she’s not a diva.”
Maybe Mariah just needs a writer — or a few more years to put her squarely on the side of laughing about her age. Marino notes how Cher brought down the house when she followed a dramatic entry with the question, “What’s your granny doing tonight?”
With Marino’s idol Ross, the key number is 71.
“They’re in their 70s and they’re getting people to buy their tickets. That’s like, crazy to me,” he says. When he saw Katy Perry, “I wanted to shoot myself. I’m like, ‘Do something.’ ” The new divas are “just dull.”
Midler and Cher sprang out of the gay camp scene of the ’70s, when the old MGM movie musicals were filtered through the new lens of the Village People or John Waters’ subversive movies with the late drag star Divine.
This vibe crossed far enough into the mainstream that I just assumed I was supposed to laugh when Mariah rode out in a pink convertible or on a Jet Ski. Yet, these big entrances played kind of flat in what is now widely said to be the post-irony, marriage equality, nice-millennials era.
“I thought, ‘How many things can she ride out?’ ” Tucker says.
“The gay guys like the superstar women when they become divas. When they become caricatures of themselves,” Marino says. “Diana Ross with the hair. Cher with the costumes. When they cross over that line and become caricatures of themselves.”
“There were many years we couldn’t put Madonna in the (drag) show because she was a girl who had blond hair and changed it all the time,” he explains. The turning point came with “the ponytail and the cone bra.”
“It’s when you have it all. It’s when you have the hair, the jewelry, the makeup and the dance moves, you become the diva that the gay guys love,” Marino says.
Marino says he didn’t realize Taylor Swift was there yet — with a large enough gay following to call for a drag impression in ‘Divas’ — until “I went to Rock in Rio and I thought I was at a white party.”
Swift’s set, a preview of her “1989” arena tour, also is a visual reminder of why presenters such as AEG Live and Caesars Entertainment Corp. get kind of stalker creepy in their obsession with divas. Las Vegas used to be famous for what they called “production shows,” and it’s a rare review of Carey from the national media that doesn’t use the phrase “Vegas-style glitz.”
The diva showcases continue a tradition dating back to Ann-Margret, Juliet Prowse and beyond. The idea has always been that even if you’re a marginal fan of the star, the eye candy gives you a show of its own.
Earlier at Rock in Rio, I watched new pop stars Charli XCX and Jessie J and realized how raw and refreshing it was to see them just sing, without being surrounded by chorus boys or trying to hit the mark with choreography. Then came Swift getting hoisted up on a park bench carried by dancers.
OK. Message received. The other two will be doing the same thing as soon as their success merits a big production, and Vegas gives them the money to do it.
Read more from Mike Weatherford at bestoflasvegas.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Mweatherford
