Las Vegas Opening Night Drama

This article is from the excellent AussieTheatre website. I've reposted it in full because it's now buried well down the site's non-tagged news page.

Las Vegas opening night drama
Wednesday, November 12, 12:04am AEDST.

Katrina Retallick was replaced by her understudy at Tuesday's opening night performance of Las Vegas (Confidential) The Musical after a bout of laryngitis meant she couldn't perform.

In a dramatic day at the State Theatre, producers made a final decision mid-afternoon that Retallick would miss opening night, but are hopeful she will return to performances this week.

Retallick, who has starred in a host of musicals, also missed Sunday's performance of the show.

An announcement was made to the audience just prior to the curtain going up on the musical, which received a luke-warm response from its opening night audience.

Retallick is playing Francesca Carlucci in the production and was replaced for opening night by Diana Holt.

The Las Vegas opening night was followed by an after-party in the State Theatre foyer which included gambling tables, allowing opening night guests to try their hand at Vegas style games all in support of charity.

The party continued well into the night.

Las Vegas has already announced it will close in late November but producers believe it may have a life outside of Sydney, and hope to announce plans for a national tour within months.

The musical, written by James Karp, is the result of his love of all things Vegas and is set during a time when the mob ran the strip. It tells a seductive story of love, sex, luck, betrayal and revenge and is based on previously untold true events. Its costumes are extravagant, and feature 26,000 diamantes.

Karp has created plenty of talk in the lead-up to the show with risque comments made to both AussieTheatre.com and The Sydney Morning Herald about the show's casting process.

"All the male dancers had to remove their clothes for me, I wanted their bodies to all look the same - I am obsessed with detail," he told AussieTheatre.com.

"I asked the girls here to go topless; they wouldn't go topless. Only one [said yes] - one set of tits in a Vegas show! But that's OK. If you have one set of tits, you can duplicate that," he told the Herald.

But Las Vegas may have a tough time winning over critics. Early reports have been mixed at best, and with the opening night response luke warm, producers will be hoping enough word of mouth spreads to make the Sydney season a success.

- Troy Dodds