Vive le Roi! After much coy hugger-mugger, Cirque du Soleil has just announced the name of its Aria show is … wait for it, people … Viva Elvis. (I cannot decide if the uninspired logo, which looks like a Ronco LP cover, is simply lame or somebody’s notion of irony.) Mon dieu! Quelle choc … mais non! It’s not like Steve Friess didn’t break this story on The Strip Podcast weeks and weeks ago.
Elvis in, Bette out. You’ve got three months left to see Bette Midler in The Showgirl Must Go On. This Vegas revue to end them all rings down the final curtain on Jan. 31. Speculation has her going to Wynncore but it doesn’t sound that way to me.
If you’re not an S&G subscriber, you may have missed an eyebrow-raising story that subscriber Toland posted in the “Comments” section (and which another reader forwarded me privately). It seems that Pinnacle Entertainment CEO Dan Lee let his understandable desire to dominate the St. Louis market get the better of him Tuesday night. If the St. Louis County Council votes in favor of a rival project’s rezoning request — which it did — it’s one more nail in the coffin of Lee’s plans to ship the Admiral up to the Chain of Rocks Bridge, drop anchor there and protect the northern flank of his St. Louis market.
Intemperate behavior like that which is being alleged isn’t going to help his cause, either, although with the matter now in the hands of the courts, the Tuesday-night melodrama could easily wind up being much ado about nothing. In any event, it doesn’t square with the calm and circumspect image Lee has cultivated for, lo, these many years.
Well, guess what. Lee has resigned. Press release came out Monday AM.