{"id":9411,"date":"2012-08-08T09:34:45","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T17:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=9411"},"modified":"2019-04-11T09:10:40","modified_gmt":"2019-04-11T17:10:40","slug":"what-if-they-gave-a-strip-spectacular-and-nobody-came","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/what-if-they-gave-a-strip-spectacular-and-nobody-came\/","title":{"rendered":"“Surf”: What if they gave a Strip spectacular and nobody came?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"You’ll have to pardon me today if I enjoy a victory lap, having beaten the dailies to the announcement of Surf The Musical<\/em>‘s demise by a good 97 minutes.* (Suck that<\/em>, Thomas F. Mitchell<\/strong>!) However, if you set store by the fable of the tortoise and the hare, pay heed to John Katsilometes<\/strong>‘ autopsy of the $10 million dud. Kats says the show is closing Aug. 15 but Planet Hollywood<\/strong> is sticking with Aug. 19. (Ticketmaster<\/strong> hasn’t gotten the memo, still selling Surf<\/em> tickets through Nov. 4) He also writes that the concert-in-drag received “reviews that ranged from tepid [that’d be the R-J<\/em>‘s Carol Cling<\/strong>] to poisonous.” (That’d be me<\/a>.) Between this and The Producers<\/em>, Gary Loveman<\/strong>‘s batting average with B’way-type shows is a robust 0.00, unless you count Jersey Boys<\/a><\/em>, which sort of fell into his lap when Sheldon Adelson<\/strong> got too greedy. (Barry Manilow<\/strong> was offered to move his act down to palatial Harrah’s Las Vegas<\/strong> but politely declined, I’m told.)<\/p>\n

According to Sun<\/em> sources, Surf<\/em> never sold so much as 200 tickets a night, sometimes fewer than 50 — or 3%-13% of capacity. Imagine: 48 or 49 lonely souls in that gargantuan space. The demoralization of the cast had to be off the misery charts and even covering the “nut” must have been a hopeless task. Audience smelled this multi-million-dollar turd a mile off and, as the saying goes, stayed home in droves. The surviving Beach Boys<\/strong> were right to keep this stinker at arm’s length.<\/p>\n

Given its Broadway<\/strong> pretensions, the production, load-in and running cost, and the anemic receipts, Surf<\/em> has a powerful, quantifiable case for being the biggest single bomb ever detonated on the Strip … and hey, I saw Fuego<\/em>\/Raw Talent Live<\/em>\/Fuego Raw Talent<\/em>\/ND’s Fuego<\/em>! So I know from bombs.\u00a0Nicole Durr<\/strong> never could decide what to call that clusterfrack until the Sahara<\/strong> called it quits.<\/p>\n

* — Katsilometes, incidentally, insists upon credit for breaking the story on the ground that he sent a Surf<\/em>-is-dead Tweet at approximately 12:40 a.m. So be it. Standards of journalism in electronic media have really fallen through the floor, if you ask me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’ll have to pardon me today if I enjoy a victory lap, having beaten the dailies to the announcement of Surf The Musical‘s demise by a good 97 minutes.* (Suck that, Thomas F. Mitchell!) However, if you set store by … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28,4,7,6,54,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9411"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23896,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9411\/revisions\/23896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}