THEATER REVIEW : Magic! Or Just ‘EFX’? : Michael Crawford Stars in High-Tech, Old-Style Vegas Show

EFX! It’s a magic world Where rules do not apply. EFX! It’s a brave new world Where any dream can fly! *

These lyrics are sung by Michael Crawford in “EFX,” which, at $40 million, is among the most expensive multimedia stage shows ever produced, in Vegas or out. Is the show, the new crown jewel of the MGM Grand’s entertainment offerings, supplying subliminal messages to gamblers enjoying a 90-minute respite from the gaming rooms? It’s a magic world where rules do not apply? Whatever else it may be, “EFX” is the latest in a long line of not-so-subtle casino encouragements to risk, risk, risk.

Not that the show is designed for the lyrics to be listened to. With a cast of 70 dancers, tumblers and singers, “EFX” bombards the audience from three sides of the new 1,800-seat Grand Theatre with a smorgasbord of visual stimulation. Much of it is overstimulating, like everything else in the casino’s hyperventilating environment. But the show boasts some divinely meaningless excess, including some mesmerizing 3-D effects.

While the effects look impressively and expensively cutting-edge, “EFX” remains an old-style Vegas show as well--shtick, empty glitter and leggy dancers held together by a thin patina of story. One number features scantily clad slave girls in bad Pat Benatar wigs who are forced by hairy troglodytes to perform stale choreography using sticks.

Overseeing the show, actually a high-tech vaudeville made up of skits, is Crawford. The former Phantom of the Opera is gainfully employed once again. He makes his first appearance as a huge disembodied head floating in clouds, with an eloquent, sad expression and a voice that almost matches his lip movements. Lasers shoot from his eyes. Noise and smoke and minions surround him. He is the EFX Master. Whatever.

Crawford also plays an approximation of Houdini, H.G. Wells, Merlin and Barnum. The theme, as you may now have guessed, is . . . magic . But, like every other thrill in Vegas, “EFX’s” magic doesn’t come cheap; the $65.50 ticket goes up to $70 on July 1.

As a normal-sized being, Crawford makes his first entrance dressed in what can only be described as a white Elvis suit, standing atop a flying saucer. The vehicle, which is maneuvered by crane all over the smoke-filled stage, looks like a huge ashtray with landing lights. Standing legs apart in a gold cummerbund and matching cuffs and breast plate, Crawford is an amalgam of Tom Jones, Liberace and Capt. Kirk. And indeed, at times Crawford’s character harks back to the former tasteless, no-tech Las Vegas, when people were not invited to bring their families and sloshed emcees with crooked bow ties called out, “Is there anyone Irish in the house? Good, then I’m not the only one who’s drunk!” As Barnum, transmuted here into an old-style Vegas emcee, Crawford actually uses that line.

He also plays the romantic lead, as Harry Houdini, a fond but dead husband who returns to sing a largely illogical and generic duet with Mrs. Houdini (Tina Walsh-Pooley) while both wear face mikes. But mostly Crawford is called upon to be grandly, majestically Magical, saying such things as “I know what you want. To see things tinged with wonder” and “Welcome to our temple of dreams!”

And they do bring on the effects. In one very loud scene, a fire-breathing dragon screams and belches at an ugly, huge bat-like creature, although the monsters actually seem to get nowhere near each other (paging Godzilla . . .). A spaceship segment concludes with the touchdown of an impressive 100-foot-across spaceship bottom (weighing 75,000 pounds) that takes over the entire huge stage and causes each seat in the house to rumble (actually, the rumbling is a separate effect).

But the best is a state-of-the-art 3-D ride through time, hosted by Crawford’s H.G. Wells. The audience puts on glasses and zooms past handsome, swirling clocks and rows of huge books falling over like dominoes, down into the fish-filled ocean and then out, soaring in the sky, where finally a pretty blue kite with a tail seems to flutter just inches from everyone’s nose.

“EFX” is a hybrid of the theme park and the musical, a natural entertainment for a town in total denial. This is a town that appropriates beloved or well-known icons, from the Pyramids to King Arthur to the Wizard of Oz, in order to sell an American dream that is as thin a thing as the paper glasses “EFX” offers for its 3-D ride through time and space.

Crawford’s face and the “EFX” logo already grace some of the slot machines at the MGM Grand. In Vegas terms, the show succeeds, its recycled icons already cycled into the mix. Yet, “EFX” acknowledges the possibility of a Vegas defeat as well, even offering a steadfast Zen philosophy for encountering it. Sings the dead Houdini to his wife:

Don’t be sad for me Everything is how it had to be. * “EFX,” Grand Theatre, the MGM Grand, Las Vegas. Information: (800) 929-1111.