Reply With QuoteSounds good.....would love to see this show!
Cirque du Soleil: Colonel marshals Elvis troupers
Stage » Utah performer anchors the newest Cirque du Soleil production, marking The King's 75th birthday.
By Tom Wharton
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 02/11/2010 04:43:16 PM MST
When Logan's Garrett Eugene Case, Jr., signed on to play the role of Elvis Presley's manager Colonel Tom Parker in a new Vegas show, at first he thought he had landed a small part.
As originally written, it was a small part, and he was sharing it with other actors. Still, the Odyssey Dance Theatre alum was happy to be cast in the new Cirque du Soleil production, "Viva Elvis," which opens Feb. 19 at the just-opened Aria Resort and Casino.
But then the part developed into something more prominent. Case plays Parker, who serves as a narrator connecting the show's musical, visual and acrobatic elements. "We are using Colonel Parker as the narrative through line to the
Logan native Garrett Eugene Case, Jr., as Colonel Tom Parker in "Viva ELVIS," by Cirque du Soleil. (Julie Aucoin/Courtesy Cirque du Soleil)show and also as a witness to Elvis' life," said Armand Thomas, director of creation for the production, noting how Parker managed the singer's career from 1956 until his death in 1977. "He is the raconteur, the privileged witness to Elvis life. We have created monologues in which the Colonel dips back in his memories in time and shares anecdotes that really enlighten us to who Elvis really was."
Produced in partnership with Elvis Presley Enterprises, the show incorporates historical footage of the singer and his recordings, plus cover versions of his songs performed live. It's billed as a fusion of dance, acrobatics and live music, blending "nostalgia, modernity and raw emotion" to pay tribute to Presley's voice and the sheer energy of his songs.
The white-suited, cigar-chomping character of Colonel Parker guides a cast of 76, which includes 30 dancers, 26 acrobats, a live nine-piece band and four female singers, performing in a state-of-the-art, 1,800-seat theater built for the production.
As Parker, Case takes part in some of the show's most spectacular special effects. In one scene, he's lowered on a filmstrip eight stories from the top of the stage to the floor. In another scene, he flies across the
Cirque du Soleil acrobats play a big role in the Viva ELVIS production which opens Feb. 19 at the City Center in Las Vegas. (Viva ELVIS)stage while images of Elvis are playing.
In a newer scene, just recently added, the actor drives a three-wheeled car similar to the one the real Elvis gave to the real Colonel Parker.
"There are so many dancers and acrobats who tell the story in their own right," Case said. "It is beautiful to watch them perform. My role sets up the past and narrates it. I try to give insight information as to who Elvis was."
One scene tells the story of Elvis's twin brother, who died at birth. His memory is portrayed through an acrobatic duet, performed through the props of a white piano and a huge silver guitar.
Case doesn't sing in the show, and the 38-year-old performer relies on the magic of makeup to age through the years. Then there's the matter of the fake cigars he chomps on, props made in China, which had to be modified, because the power tasted "nasty. "We had to fix them so I don't have to inhale that stuff," he says.
One of the performer's challenges in preparing for the Feb. 19 opening, after a month and a half of preview shows, is how the script has evolved. "With my role, it has been finding the script, and finding the right words that work with what the narrative needs to be and where it goes," he said. "I have been memorizing, then memorizing something else, and trying to forget. It's been a fun challenge to put myself through as an actor to step up to the next level."
The "Elvis" tribute, opening in the 75th anniversary year of the singer's birth, is different than the other Cirque shows playing on the Vegas strip. It's even markedly different than the other big-name music show, "The Beatles Love," playing at The Mirage. "Love" incorporates original Beatles songs that were redigitalized for the show, utilizing characters from the songs. In contrast, a live band and singers are on stage for most of the "Viva Elvis."
"With the Las Vegas shows, we are in this diversification mode that no two shows should replicate the other, especially in such close proximity," Thomas said. "We have to create new art every time."
Thomas and the rest of Cirque's producers focused on the cultural history embedded in the singer's life and music. "Elvis is the star of this show," Thomas said. "We had to capture him in many ways, through visuals, his voice, storytelling, the atmosphere, our choice of colors and our choice of sets. We had master tapes where we could listen to Elvis in a studio doing 14 different takes on "Hound Dog"and everything that goes in between each take. All of that allowed us to really be almost eavesdroppers on his life."
wharton@sltrib.com
Brian
Sounds good.....would love to see this show!
I can't make my mind up about this........it's getting mixed reviews.
There's 40 imps in the 'Viva Las Vegas scene'.......
"NO-ONE, BUT NO-ONE,IS HIS EQUAL, OR EVER WILL BE. HE WAS, AND IS SUPREME".Mick Jagger
There are no Elvis impersonators in 'Viva Elvis'.
"Viva Viva Elvis" says US Time Magazine: There he is, in vivid black and white, onstage at Las Vegas' new Aria hotel-casino, squalling "Blue Suede Shoes" on a gigantic screen behind a jukebox-shaped set. Below him, eight musicians serve as his amped-up house band while a dozen dancers practically leap out of their tight pants and pedal pushers. At centre stage is a huge shoe, which another half-dozen revellers use as a trampoline, performing double somersaults in time to the music. The King looks down, smiling as if in approval of this spectacular union of two crucial elements--one past, one present--of Vegas show biz. Elvis Presley, meet Cirque du Soleil's Viva Elvis.
From his first concert series at the International Hotel in 1969 until his death in 1977, Elvis was Las Vegas. Glammed up in sequined duds that would make a showgirl or Liberace envious, he pleased his aging audience, singing his early hits that once had the musk of sexual revolt but by then were golden oldies. And while he redefined Sin City's notion of a headliner show, the town changed Presley as well. At the end, the kid from Tupelo, Miss., may have been more Vegas than Elvis.
The Strip has another king now. Since 1993, with the opening of Mystère, the Montreal-based Cirque has come to dominate Vegas entertainment with such theatrical extravaganzas as the water show O and the martial-arts epic Ka--pieces that in scope and technical éclat are to the typical Broadway show what Avatar is to the 1933 King Kong. In 2006, Cirque pulled off a Beatles homage, Love, but that was sedate stuff next to this audiovisual-balletic-acrobatic explosion from director Vincent Paterson and "director of creation" Armand Thomas. They've concocted an experience that's both symphonic and in every way fantastic.
Beginning and ending with Elvis '56 ("Blue Suede Shoes" to start, "Hound Dog" for the finale), the 90-min. show, now in previews before its official opening Feb. 19, sprints through Presley's youth, his first phenomenal success, his Army service, his marriage to Priscilla Beaulieu, his movies and the Vegas years. This is hagiography, not biography; it's no warts, all wonder.
The wonder comes not just in the death-taunting circus feats--trapeze agility, high-bar gymnastics--that are the company's hallmark but also in the superb editing of Elvis clips (by Ivan Dudynsky) and the savvy sampling of the musical material (by Erich van Tourneau) that revises and refreshes the Presley oeuvre. No tribute show can touch this one in its level of sophistication and its power of evocation.
Got a Lot o' Livin' to Do
In Vintage Cirque style, Viva Elvis often soars into the symbolic, the oneiric. To suggest the star's closeness to his twin brother Jesse, who died at birth, the show offers, to a tender rendition of the ballad "One Night," a vision of two young men in James Dean--ish white T-shirts and jeans, executing soulful acrobatics, alone and together, on a guitar-shaped apparatus suspended in front of a starry night sky. At the end, one of the men--Jesse--falls off into the abyss.
There's plenty of vigorous terpsichore (this is as much a dance show as a circus show), but Viva Elvis can't stay earthbound for long. In the Army section, to the tune of "Are You Lonesome Tonight?," two figures on wires--a soldier abroad and his girl back home, holding a letter she's written him--execute a poignant pas de deux; they never touch until at last he grasps the letter and presses it to his chest. The Elvis-Priscilla courtship is staged with a man and a woman reclining on separate beds, then (to "Love Me") rising in sleep to meet their dream lovers on large airborne engagement rings in two complementarily sensual couplings. Cover the kids' eyes!
The very smart choice of songs covers both the canonical ("Heartbreak Hotel," "Jailhouse Rock," "Burning Love") and the merely fabulous ("Got a Lot o' Livin' to Do," which accompanies an ecstatic amusement-park bit with high-bouncing superheroes). Of course the climax is "Viva Las Vegas," with 40 Elvis impersonators and a dozen chorines filling Mark Fisher's staircased set and the Big E back onscreen, overseeing the riot of color and movement.
The real Vegas has had its profits pinched by the Great Recession lately. But luxe, energy, sexual threat and primal rock 'n' roll are back in fashion on the Aria stage, where Cirque is throwing its most joyous party ever--and where Elvis lives.
(News, Source;ElvisInfoNet/NaveenVerghese
is this not correct then Brian?
14 Takes on Hound Dog, yeah, sure thing! What else you got?Originally Posted by Brian Quinn
We had master tapes where we could listen to Elvis in a studio doing 14 different takes on "Hound Dog"and everything that goes in between each take. All of that allowed us to really be almost eavesdroppers on his life."
wharton@sltrib.com
Brian
From a 13-Feb-10 Montreal Gazette article posted on TCB-World's homepage:
"Was impersonation against the rule? "There was no rule," he replied. "We just took a creative decision not to do that. There are so many shows of that nature. And why have an impersonator when you can have the real (celluloid) Elvis?"
Link: http://www.tcb-world.com/content.php...o-the-building
I am also keeping my fingers crossed that there are no impersonators in this show..... (just don't think it would be a good thing in this scenario)
I am also glad to hear of some of the changes.......
Like you, I was getting worried it might not be so great.........
Now, I think I might try to get tickets for late spring/early summer..............
Deb,
From the reports I have heard there are no Elvis impersonators in 'Viva Elvis'. Further, Elvis's voice is the only singing male one heard in the show and there are a couple of duets with females. There was an impersonator featured in the show wearing stilts but he has now been removed.
Brian
About 14 takes of Hound Dog...
He is just confused right? As far as we all know, there is no session tapes of Hound Dog but just the master. Or is this an extra big news?
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