We just saw Celine Dion at Caesars Palace tonight on a comp. We were in the
1st Mezzane, which normal people would call the 1st Balcony. Apparently
hosts can request whichever section they want - apparently we weren't good
enough for Orchestra. But at least it wasn't the 2nd Mezzane....
The show is a mixed one. While I'm not a Celine fan, her voice was excellent
and her delivery seemed heartfelt. This was only the 9th performance of the
show, but everything seemed in good shape.
Everyone has to go through metal detectors, but they seemed more interested
in ferreting out cameras than bombs. And they were curosory enough in
searching bags to miss both! This process is time-consuming, so leave extra
time to get into the show.
While the show is supposedly "sold out" we saw some empty seats at curtain
time (about 10 minutes late). We've heard rumors that some ticket dealers
are unloading tickets at half price, but who knows. It seemed odd that the
host bumped me from a Thursday showing over to Saturday - wouldn't Thursday
be less crowded? But still she bumped us to better seats.
Speaking of seats, you really want to be in the front Orchestra section if
possible. And you don't want to be higher than 1st Mezz. I truly doubt the
claims that "every seat in the house is only 120 feet from the stage." I
wish I could have taken a measuring tape to check it, but it looked farther
than that to me. Further, the huge stage is probably nearly 100 feet deep,
so at times you were really far from the action.
The show never totally worked for me. When you listen to a singer, you want
to watch her, and thus the best venue for someone like Celine Dion would be
to see her alone on a stage with a big orchestra. Here the giant LED screen
in the back and the 60 or so dancers distracted from her presence in most of
the numbers. Do you watch Celine or do you watch the rest of the performers
and just listen to her sing? Of course from our Balcony ...oh I mean
Mezzanine...seats we couldn't really see much of her face. But I had brought
binoculars, and at times watched her through those, and when you concentrated
just on her and her singing, it was excellent. It seemed like the big LED
display could have been used to show some closeups of her face occasionally;
when it did rarely show her, the views were of full-body.
Since a whole lot was going on on the stage during the numbers, if you just
watched Celine, you'd miss the rest of the show. Which resulted in a
conflict - watch Celine, or watch the rest?
The big LED screen in the back was truly stunning at times, and distracting
from all the performers (not just Celine). The dancers really worked hard.
The only problem was that I soon hated the choreographer. Many of the steps
were awkward and jerky. I also started to hate the costume designer - - the
women dancers kept wearing the same white short dress over and over and over
- couldn't they get some different costumes? But maybe they just couldn't
afford them, since the whole show must be costing a fortune to produce (which
is why ticket prices are so high - over $200 for the best seats). There were
a huge amount of ushers (more than needed, I thought), and security people at
the door, plus the cast, orchestra, stagehands, etc. A big cast/crew costing
a lot of $. But still, couldn't they have at least one change of clothes for
them?
And Celine Dion's wardrobe wasn't much better, though she did manage to
change costumes several times. Her hair is now short, and looking through my
binoculars, it looked like a bad wig, though could have just been a bad
haircut. Publicity pictures show her with the softer look of long hair. At
times she looked rather androgenous in this show. Her first red pants outfit
was fine, but later she appeared in a grey/sparklie dress that was just
awful, especially when I took a close look through the binoculars at the
tacky flowers on front and bad bodice line. Her overall outfit would have
been okay for 1 number, but really didn't work for more than that. Her final
silver dress was okay from long distance, but not that nice through
binoculars.
I'm a big fan of musicals and have watched many many movie musicals, seen
Broadway shows, and have seen many Vegas shows. So one way to watch this
show was just to watch the numbers as if they were big production numbers,
and just listen to Celine. But some of the numbers just didn't work,
especially the first big number with fantasy like Vegas show-style outfits
that didn't seem to mesh with the song. The best numbers were a song about
Seduction with bare-chested men crawling all around Celine - this meshed the
music, Celine, and the performers together well. The number where people
"flew" also worked fairly well, though they might have wisked the people
closer to the back of the house (i.e. us poor guys in the Balconies). In
another number Celine danced with some male dancers, and since this
integrated her with the dancers in a good way, this was one of the better
numbers. But when Celine distracted us from the dancers, or the dancers/LED
distracted us from Celine, or the bad choregraphy just seemed distracting,
things weren't so good.
The Fever number would have been good, except for parts of the coreography
which were too weird and didn't quite go with the music - it was too forced
somehow.
Some of the stage lighting seemed a bit too dark in some numbers also.
But the basic problem with the show is that though it isn't a bad show, it
just isn't as good as it should be due to the fact that the huge stage, the
big production numbers, the big LED display, and Celine just didn't mesh
right in most instances. Some of the things were stunning, but that also
meant they were distracting from Celine's singing, and some of the stuff
going on on the stage seemed to be just for special effect or to fill the
huge stage, but not to form a cohesive whole.
I somehow expected that the show would be more separated, Celine singing
numbers, then Cirque du Soliel type stuff, then Celine, etc. Instead, Celine
is there throughout, and the rest of the performers are generally dancers (no
Cirque type acrobatics).
Some elements have that surreal Cirque quality though.
Since this show is the most expensive on the strip, the question rightly
asked is, is it worth the money? Well - maybe is my answer. If you love
Celine, you'll love this show, and will want to be in the Orchestra. If you
love Cirque go see "O" for less money. If you love big Vegas type
extravaganzas, maybe see Jubilee or Siegfried and Roy. If you love musicals,
see "Mama Mia." But if you can get a comp or have seen these other shows and
would like to see something different, spend at least $125 for the 1st
Mezzanine.
As some critics have pointed out, the final number "What a Wonderful World"
is quite weak, and hopefully will be replaced. I also didn't like the
previous number where Celine urged everyone to stand up, and of course they
did -- I have bad knees and don't like to stand. I also don't like it when a
star ends a number by saying "Goodnight folks" runs off stage, and the
lights remain dim in an obvious fake ending - as happened in this show.
Yeah I guess I have mentioned a lot of things I didn't like, such as the
duality of the show (Celine versus production), the choreographer, the
costumer, the huge stage, etc. But some things were good, mostly Celine Dion
and her voice (even though I'm not a big Celine fan), some stunning visuals
on the LED, some excellent dancers, etc. I'm torn by the fact that some
stuff was really good, but the numbers generally didn't work as a whole
entitity, and of course for this price you want everything to be as stunning
as "O" or watching Barbara Streisand live (note, she doesn't need giant
production numbers behind her).
Yet if I could get some free Orchestra seats, I would see this show again.
So maybe for someone not as cheap as I am, it is in some sense worth the $200
price.
The show runs 1 1/2 hours by the way. What has happened to the old standard
of shows lasting 2 hours? For this much money, it should have been longer.
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