Shangri-La-La

I never thought I’d be sitting down to write a post about a musical about Siegfried & Roy.  But here we are, now that I’ve seen Shangri-La-La.  And yes, it was a musical about the famous pair of Las Vegas magicians.  Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it.  And I’ve seen a lot of musicals.  This one fit the basic bill.  It was bright and colorful.  The songs were catchy and fit with the story that was being told.  For a small show, the costumes, set, effects, and all the rest of that were really great.  But I still wasn’t quite ready for what I was about to see.

Before the show, I found out that the Shangri-La-La we were seeing that night is an abridged version.  The actual show, which is about two hours long, has a lot more of the drama that we skim the surface of in this show.  But because it’s making it’s way through the festival circuit (I was seeing this show as a part of Philly Fringe), and a lot of those festivals want shows at about an hour, they sort of…cut out all the drama and left the funny bits.  I thought this was an interesting choice, and at just under an hour, Shangri-La-La definitely left an impression.

This show was written by Mike Meier, an attorney who brought a sexual harassment lawsuit against Siegfried and Roy in 2013.  This is an interesting history in and of itself.  If it were me involved in that lawsuit, or anything like it, I definitely wouldn’t think to write a comedy musical about it.  I guess that’s a pretty cool way to get it out in the open and come to terms with your feelings.  Everyone works differently, and I think it’s pretty cool that this is how it played out for Meier.  Watching Shangri-La-La, I definitely wouldn’t have thought it was written by an attorney.

Before the show, I actually got to meet Meier.  I think it’s really cool that he’s that involved with this show still, and I’m sure he travels with the group.  He was very open and honest with me.  We talked about the show, the length they’ve cut it to for festivals, his personal history with the story, and how they’ll soon be putting on the full version in DC.  I loved that he really does care about this.  And although this is a comedy, the full version has more of the drama, including the court case.  Shangri-La-La really came from somewhere deep and personal.  That means a lot.

For what little they had, the cast and crew of Shangri-La-La did a really phenomenal job.  Gage Wright and Carson Hopkins, who played the famous duo, really found a nice combination of being funny, dumb, pathetic, and a variety of other things they presented to us.  It was a very different sort of version of Siegfried & Roy than I’ve seen before.  I remember a good amount of what was talked about and shown in the musical, and I didn’t think I’d ever see this side of things.  It was interesting, for sure.

There were definitely some things in the show that I didn’t know if they were supposed to be funny or not.  I think this was one of the biggest issues I had with Shangri-La-La.  I know comedies aren’t necessarily one-hundred percent funny, but this one had some strange moments.  I think that’s sort of the nature of a show like this, though.  Although it’s being billed as a musical comedy, there’s still darkness in the story.  Especially since we know the longer version shows even more of that.

My favorite part of the musical was the interesting choice to make everyone a villain.  There were no heroes in this story.  I guess that could really be about anything.  Maybe it was a part of Meier’s lens.  Maybe there really was no hero in the story…or at least the abridged story we saw.  Maybe it’s a reflection on Las Vegas itself.  I feel like it’s pretty rare to find heroes in stories about Las Vegas.  But it was still interesting to see.  I didn’t want to root for anyone!  Except maybe the tigers…they talked, and I felt terrible for them.  Maybe they were the heroes.

In the end, I will say that I’m definitely interested to see the entire production.  I think that this could definitely be one of those really cool niche musicals that has a cult following…and some of my favorite musicals are really cool niche musicals with cult followings.  From the hour or so long production that I saw, I saw something that really does have a lot of potential.  Everything, especially every musical, has to start somewhere, right?  And maybe that start is a small cast with a small show touring festivals.  There are stranger things in this world.