Frommer's Las Vegas 2004

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CHAPTER 10 . LAS VEGAS AFTER DARK
12 Inaccuracies in the Movie Showgirls
By the showgirls in Jubilee!
1. Nomi Malone wouldn’t be in a Las Vegas production because she
can’t sing (or act).
2. Showgirls do not live in trailers.
3. Showgirls aren’t discovered in strip bars.
4. Showgirls do not pimp themselves at conventions or trade shows.
5. Hotel owners do not throw lavish cast parties.
6. A lead dancer does not become a celebrity.
7. No one learns a show in a day.
8. Pushing someone down the stairs doesn’t get you a lead role—it
gets you fired.
9. Ice is used backstage to treat injuries, not to erect nipples.
10. Leaving rehearsal to go to Spago to drink champagne is generally
frowned upon.
11. Showgirls are not coke-sniffing, champagne-drinking lesbians.
12. Anyway, showgirls do not drink champagne backstage—we prefer
Jack Daniel’s!
lip-synched, and always accompanied by lavishly costumed and frequently topless
showgirls. Humorous set pieces about Samson and Delilah and the sinking of the
Titanic (!) show off some pretty awesome sets. (They were doing the Titanic long
before a certain movie, and recent attendees claimed the ship-sinking effect on
stage here was better than the one in the movie.) The finale features aerodynamically
impossible feathered and bejeweled costumes and headpieces designed by
Bob Mackie. So what if the dancers are occasionally out of step, and the action
sometimes veers into the dubious (a Vegas-style revue about a disaster that took
more than 1,000 lives?) or even the inexplicable (a finale praising beautiful
and bare-breasted girls suddenly stops for three lines of “Somewhere Over the
Rainbow”?). In Bally’s Las Vegas, 3645 Las Vegas Blvd. S. & 800/237-7469 or 702/739-4567.
Tickets $54–$64 (excluding tax). Sat–Thurs 7:30 and 10:30pm.
La Femme! Further proof that Vegas is trying to distance itself from the “Vegas
is for Families” image, Classy Adult Entertainment are the new watchwords in several
hotels, with La Femme! leading the pack. Allegedly the same show that has
been running for years in a famous racy French nightclub, this show is just a bunch
of pretty girls taking their clothes off. Except that the girls are smashingly pretty,
with the kind of bodies just not found on real live human beings, and they take
their clothes off in curious and yes, artistic ways, gyrating on pointe shoes while
holding on to ropes or hoops, falling over sofas while lip syncing to French torch
songs—in short, it’s what striptease ought to be, and by gosh, if strip clubs were
this well staged, we’d go to them all the time. But $60 a ticket is a great deal to pay
for arty nudie fun, especially when the routines, no matter how clever or how
naked (the girls get down to a postage-stamp-size triangle soul patch covering the
naughtiest of their bits, so they aren’t “nude,” but talk about a technicality), start
to seem alike after awhile. In the MGM Grand, 3799 Las Vegas Blvd. S. & 800/929-1111 or
702/891-7777. Tickets $59 (excluding tax). Wed–Mon 8:30 and 10:30pm.