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New York Post
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Broadway's right — Jay-Z's Times Square casino bid must fail
Broadway was singing a different showtune this week. Luck be a lady… somewhere else! Many of the theater's powerful unions, landlords, trade organizations and ally businesses a-five-six-seven-hate Jay-Z, Caesars Entertainment and SL Green Realty's bad, bad, bad bid to plop a casino in Times Square. 5 Broadway workers protested the bid for a casino to be built right in the middle of Times Square. Billy Tompkins/ZUMA / In the very same building that's home to family-friendly 'The Lion King,' 1515 Broadway, blackjack beckons. One block away from 'Hamilton,' drunk tourists losing all of their Benjamins. Broadway feels such intense loathing toward Beyonce's husband's plan for Caesars Palace Times Square that, like the hippies of 'Hair,' the pros staged a rally Thursday by the red steps ahead of Friday's deadline for proposals. They were practically singing 'One Day More' out there. 'This casino's developers don't care about improving this neighborhood,' Broadway League prez Jean Valjean, I mean, Jason Laks said. 'A casino in the heart of Times Square would only set this area back.' Do you hear the people sing? Eight bids are competing for three gambling licenses around the metro area — from near the UN (just what foreign dignitaries need!) all the way up to Yonkers. Caesars' is the splashiest. 5 Caesars Palace Times Square would make its home at 1515 Broadway. A Better Times Square I'm not much of a protester. What do I want? A chair! When do I want it? Now! But I sit in solidarity with Broadway. They're dead right. The last thing the Crossroads of the World needs is poker tables, slot machines and the inevitable filth and riffraff that cling to them like saran wrap. The theater industry's chief beef, however, is a financial one. 'A casino can go anywhere,' Laks said. 'Broadway can only be here.' Show people insist that a shiny new gambling den would dangerously compete with their productions, which are only just getting back to some semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy. This past Broadway season had the highest attendance levels since 2019. A casino would rain on their parade. 5 Jay-Z is one of the forces behind the Times Square casino bid. Getty Images Gaming establishments are designed to keep customers inside them so they can spend all their money on the premises — at proprietary hotels, bars, restaurants and entertainments. Not at Joe Allen. Not at Hurley's. Not at Un Deux Trois. Only at Caesars. Once inside, the buildings tend to be labyrinthine and challenging to make your way out of. Intentionally. Those sneaks use psychological tricks such as dim lighting and windowless rooms to make you lose track of time. In short, the people who run casinos don't really want you to scurry off to see 'Aladdin.' 5 A Better Times Square Caesars says: Au contraire. Our business will be a boon to Broadway. We'll buy up thousands of tickets. That's funny as 'The Book of Mormon.' How does it benefit Caesars to send customers to a 2 ½-hour musical at 8 p.m.? It doesn't. That's just lip service to get the heavyweight Broadway League and Shubert Organization onboard. What of Las Vegas? They have shows, too, you say? Yes, Sin City does. But it's a different animal. You enter them from the casino floor. And they are nearly all 90 minutes long — purpose-built to get you back to the cards and chips ASAP. Twenty Broadway musicals currently are more than two hours and have an intermission. By the way, Broadway shows not called 'Mamma Mia!,' almost always flop hard in Vegas. So that's one giant dilemma. 5 While Las Vegas has shows, most are 90 minutes and entered from the casino floor. A Better Times Square Here's my issue. Times Square is already a Circus, Circus. The area has been especially disgusting and unruly since 2020, even if stronger policing has helped in recent months. The city's imbecilic moves over the years to turn much of it into a car-free pedestrian plaza has already provided ample opportunity for the homeless to sleep on the ground and drug dealers with a constant supply impaired loiterers. So, let's add gambling to that toxic mix. Nobody with a brain really believes that a casino would improve Times Square. Just like no one really believed that legalizing pot would be a consequence-free moneymaker for the state. Our ethically challenged politicians go gaga for these terrible ideas because of the payoffs they get. Meanwhile our neighborhoods and businesses suffer. The only high rollers Times Square needs are investors who pour millions into risky Broadway shows. Now, that's one helluva gamble.
The Guardian
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Les Misérables: The Arena Spectacular review – an irresistible, 40th anniversary love letter
If any musical deserves the arena treatment, it's Les Misérables. Hear me out! Like the best pop and rock music gigs, Les Mis is stacked with emotional bangers, from top to bottom. From almost the very beginning of its life on stage, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil's adaptation of Victor Hugo's brick of a novel has presented its music in concert. The show is sung-through – even the exposition – and when you have a cast of musical theatre performers that are strong as both actors and singers, the emotional connection remains, even in an arena setting. This 'arena spectacular' version is sung to the back of the house by an international cast from Les Mis productions past and present. There are some cuts to the score to help this famously long show move along (it used to run for over three hours, until cost-cutting in later productions trimmed it down to two hours and 50 minutes), while keeping the glorious numbers the people really want: I Dreamed a Dream, Stars and One Day More. The orchestra, under the direction of Adrian Kirk, sounds rich and full. The concert lighting turns revolutionaries into rock stars. Those leitmotifs and melodies land like gifts. The performers have tears in their eyes. We have tears in our eyes. There's Jean Valjean (Alfie Boe on opening night, also played on tour by Killian Donnelly), breaking his parole to start life over a free man. There's Fantine (Rachelle Ann Go), cruelly stomped on by circumstance. There's Javert (Michael Ball on opening night, also played on tour by Bradley Jaden), a man who so believes in law and order that he calls stars 'sentinels'. There are the students who fight and die for the revolution – see Enjolras (James D Gish), vibrating with righteousness, and Marius (Jac Yarrow), who takes one look at Cosette (Beatrice Penny-Touré) and falls head over heels. There's Eponine (Shan Ako), longing for Marius and dying in his arms. And of course, the scheming Thénardiers (Matt Lucas and Helen Walsh, stepping in for Marina Prior on opening night), trying to get a little audience participation going. But look closer, Les Mis super-fans (if you're not one of them, you'll know them at your performance – they're the ones who scamper down to collect the scraps of Valjean's torn-up ticket). The cast is stuffed with past Grantaires and Feuillys and Courfeyracs and Factory Girls, these featured and supporting players lovingly compiled in YouTube celebrations. This is an irresistible, 40th anniversary love letter to the show that is so many people's first favourite musical, made for the fans who have passed it on to their children, or who play the ensemble numbers for singalongs at house parties, or who lovingly collect cast albums and trivia (or all of the above). That everyone is completely, fully, gorgeously committed is what makes it work. They have to be: you simply cannot approach the material half-heartedly, which directors James Powell and Jean-Pierre Van Der Spuy clearly understand. If you take one second to detach from Les Mis's gorgeous, enormous, bleeding heart, it all feels a bit silly and over-dramatic. Rush the tempo too much and you could break the spell. Suffer an awkward scene transition and you start to remember that some of these characters are pretty thin and the ending feels like a bit of a slog towards the finish line (OK, that part still happens here). But for most of its runtime, this Les Mis, an 'arena spectacular' of all things and at the ICC Sydney of all places, just works. This company gets you right in that sweet spot when their voices carry up to the rafters. Do you hear the people sing? I did, and it was magical. Les Misérables: The Arena Spectacular is on at the ICC Theatre now, then Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena from 14 May and Brisbane's Entertainment Centre from 28 May.
