One of the things keeping me away from the S&G desk of late has been a trifle called Betrayal by Harold Pinter, which I’ve been staging for Las Vegas Little Theatre Studio and which opened last Friday (it runs through March 31). This is a love child I’d been incubating since last September and now it is toddling into the world on its own feet. None of Pinter’s works had been staged in Las Vegas since 2008, although some inferior imitators of his style have held the stage recently, and this wickedly witty and erotic drama seemed the perfect “comeback” vehicle. It’s also been the culmination of eight pretty heady months of theatrical activity. The latter’s been pretty hard on my bank account but incalculably gratifying from a spiritual standpoint. It’s also enabled LVLT to tap into Sin City’s underexposed Latino acting community. Two of our first three performances of Betrayal have been sellouts, so here’s hoping it continues to generate solid ROI for Little Theatre, which — in backing it — took a chance on a guy who hasn’t directed in 30 years.
On a less-elevated level, some of the low moments of the Vegas magic scene received S&G-style razzing in the pages of CityLife. Of course, there have been so many mockery-worthy magic acts in town just in the last 15 years that you could probably make a cover story out of them … and still not have room for the Melinda Saxe sex tape, a golden oldie from decades ago.
(Photo by Susannah Smitherman, courtesy of Las Vegas Little Theatre.)
