“Energy and heart.” That’s what Lady Gaga has brought to the Las Vegas Strip, according to early notices of Enigma. If you’ve seen A Star Is Born, you know that the sky’s the limit for Her Ladyship’s talent (even though the film itself is heavily flawed). While I’m even more intrigued by the forthcoming Jazz & Piano at Park MGM where she plays the piano with a small combo, exploring the riches of the great American songbook, Enigma is the flashier production that will get all the attention (and pay the bills). Gaga came in facing high expectations and would appear to have met or even surpassed them.
“If the question of who Lady Gaga is isn’t exactly resolved here, it’s certainly deconstructed, dispelled, and chased down a futuristic dystopian wormhole,” wrote Entertainment Weekly‘s Mark Snetiker. It “sent audiences out on a moving note, elevated to a place almost as high as the very one from which Gaga descended at the beginning of her weird, wonderful show.” The narrative has Her Ladyship trying to solve the riddle posed by CGI creation Enigma, sending Lady Gaga off on a voyage of self-discovery which — naturally — requires the performance of all her greatest hits (and one or two not so great), and there are quite a few of them. The premise sounds dangerously like We Will Rock You but the high-tech staging and Gaga’s daredevil panache seem to make it work.
Critic Lyndsey Parker went so far as to say, Gaga “just may have outdone herself at the opening night of her ‘Enigma’ residency at the Park MGM in Las Vegas Friday. As she hovered in a wire-strung harness, KISS/P!nk-style, above the 5,200-capacity crowd — which included superstar fans Katy Perry, Dave Grohl, Adam Lambert and Jeremy Renner — wearing a mirrorball-reflective unitard and geometric baby-blue wig, she fingered a keytar and sang her breakthrough 2008 hit, ‘Just Dance.’ … perhaps no other artist in modern pop history is so clearly made for Sin City: Gaga has never shied away from spectacle, yet she can also clean up nice and croon the classics with her old-school pal Tony Bennett.” Parker admitted that Gaga traded “scripted, somewhat stilted lines with a widescreen, two-dimensional image of her chrome-domed fembot ruler.” But the crowd devoured it. “It was all totally ridiculous, and it all totally worked.”
Even Rolling Stone was compelled to call the evening “stellar.” The magazine explains that “it seemed like a part of Gaga’s vampy, big voiced theatrics were made for this bright, busy, sleepless city. Over her two-hour Enigma show, however, she proves something different: a place like Vegas was made just for Gaga.” Billboard seconded that emotion, declaring, “From the moment that Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta burst into our consciousness a decade ago, it was obvious that [she] was built for a Las Vegas residency.” The magazine described the show as part-Wizard of Oz part-Ghost in the Shell. “It’s ridiculous in an affectionate way but also on par with Gaga’s performance art style.”
The fashion-oriented will be relieved to read that “the outfits (oh, the outfits!) were outrageously unique. With her longtime fashion collaborator Nicola Formichetti and her sister Natali Germanotta joining forces, the duo spawned a number of creative looks –ranging from florescent and leather to a body suit with flashing LED lights and a nude-colored unitard– for Gaga, the dancers and her band that would have made David Bowie proud.” We’ll go out on a limb a predict that Her Ladyship’s 26 dates will be extended. During her premiere, Lady Gaga told the crowd “I’m stickin’ around for two whole years. Three if I’m lucky!”
Luck has nothing to do with it.
* On January 30, Stratosphere is adding its own entrant among the spectacle-based Las Vegas shows. Entitled Celestia, it is described as “an otherworldly story of love and sacrifice through elite acrobatics and dance, aerial feats, live music, state-of-the-art 
technology and sophisticated illusion, Celestia brings together a talented troupe of 32 multicultural performers to create an eye-popping, immersive experience. From mind-blowing contortion and the Wheel of Death act, to real-time motion capture and projection mapping, Celestia’s world-class performers create a dazzling spectacle unlike any other.” Hmmmm … sounds familiar. Indeed, director Sasha Ivanov is late of Cirque du Soleil and names Lady Gaga and Pink among his previous collaborators. Since the Stratosphere showroom is relatively modest in size, Celestia will be performed in “a never-before-seen proprietary tent,” using technology that Ivanov claims is new to Sin City (I’d have to think that there aren’t many tricks that Cirque hasn’t already mastered). One thing that’s definitely a novelty is the low end of ticket prices: $29 (topping out at $89). We’re for anything that strikes a blow on behalf of affordability in Vegas.
* One of the vexations afflicting the private-sector casino industry is that it can’t incentivize players at tribal casinos to visit, say, Las Vegas. That may be changing. The Oneida Nation has contracted with Caesars Entertainment to be its sports-betting provider to Turning Stone, Point Place Casino and Yellow Brick Road Casino. TS Rewards members will be able to have their points converted to Total Rewards ones and vice versa. Tier levels will also be matched. As part of the new arrangement, which ought to be pleasing to players, each of the new casinos will open a “Lounge at Caesars Sports.” The deal still has to jump through regulatory hoops at the state and federal levels but ought to be approved, in the sense of “should be,” not “will be.” Nothing is for certain tribally under the current federal administration.
* A new use has been found for Alexa: directing do-it-yourself, multi-camera videos of your session at Sheri’s Ranch. The brothel has put out a new menu of sexual experiences for sale, so long it runs to multiple pages. “Sheri’s Ranch has seen a steady rise in the number of women and couples visiting us each year. In 2014, about 15% of total
Sheri’s Ranch
customers were individual females and male/female or female/female couples. In 2017, that total was 22%, indicating that women and couples are becoming increasingly comfortable visiting sex workers,” said resident madam ‘Dena.’ (We somehow suspect that’s not her real name.) Since this is a family publication, we’ll skip most of the menu but provide a flavor of same: the Naru Massage, “Popular in Japanese bathhouses for several decades … a wet massage in which both you and your courtesan are fully nude. A slippery, all-natural gel is heated to a comfortable temperature and generously applied to both participants. Your masseuse then glides her slippery naked body over yours, causing a unique tactile sensation that is startlingly arousing …” You get the idea. I think I saw something of this sort in Emmanuelle II.
