Rescripting the Strip

FOR the moment, at least, the spacious executive office at the Wynn Las Vegas resort, dominated by a seminal Piet Mondrian painting, has been transformed into a Broadway piano bar. And the man singing snatches of show tunes? Chief executive Steve Wynn.

“And we’re so by God stubborn, we can stand touchin’ noses for a week at a time and never see eye to eye,” he sings, sounding like a cross between Richard Nixon and Ed Sullivan in a song from Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man.”

“Anybody who can write that is my kind of guy,” says Wynn, 63, dressed in a dark suit and red power tie, before breaking into a number from the show -- his favorite -- which features fast-talking con man Harold Hill trying to slip one over on a town of flinty Iowans.

It isn’t often one finds a Forbes 400 magnate who knows lyrics to “The Music Man.” But this is hardly your typical suit. As he speaks, many Steve Wynns emerge -- stage-struck crooner, buttonholing carnival barker, charming raconteur, inveterate name dropper-and-affixer, humble Buddhist. Then there’s the persona for which he’s most universally known: the fast-talking, fiercely competitive billionaire who, with his deep pockets and Pharaonic ambitions, has been challenging the way Vegas does business.

In the late ‘80s and the ‘90s, he redefined Vegas glamour with his lavish Mirage and Bellagio hotels. He sent ripples through luxury retailing and fine dining by offering fashion designers and top chefs exclusive contracts at his hotels. And the stuffy art world was shaken when this upstart took a crash course in art appreciation, then brought $400 million of museum-quality masterpieces to masses in Las Vegas.

Now he’s at it again. But this time through Broadway musical theater. And that has the Las Vegas cognoscenti scratching their heads and theater producers -- especially in California -- running for the antacid tablets.

In a one-two punch, Wynn snapped up the last two winners of the best musical Tony Award, “Avenue Q” and “Spamalot,” for his new hotel. He reportedly paid $5 million for the right to have the only U.S. venue outside of New York for the former and $10 million to be the only licensee of the latter within a three-state area, effectively blacking out California, Arizona and the rest of Nevada from next year’s national tour of the smash hit Monty Python musical.

“It was a smart move on his part,” says Michael Ritchie, artistic director of Center Theatre Group. “It hurts us, no question. ‘Spamalot’ as an anchor would have been unbelievable for us. But it really remains to be seen if Vegas becomes a destination for musicals much beyond where it is now. We’re watching with a great deal of interest.”

And anxiety? “Interest,” reiterates Ritchie. “In three or five years, that may jump to anxiety. But no use wringing our hands over it now.”

Whether that jump takes place depends, to a large extent, on the scope of Wynn’s ambitions. He is by no means the first to play the Broadway card in Vegas. “Mamma Mia!,” the global phenomenon, is in its third year at the Mandalay Bay; “We Will Rock You,” a London import, is still hanging on at the Paris, and the opening of “Avenue Q” at the Wynn last week will be followed early next year by “Hairspray” at the Luxor and a new $35-million “Phantom of the Opera” at the Venetian. But given Wynn’s resources and near-mythic reputation as an innovator, he is perhaps the person best positioned to influence the burgeoning, if spotty, Broadway-to-Vegas axis -- and vice versa.

‘AVENUE’ ON THE STRIP

WYNN’S calling card is an ironic choice for a free-spending tycoon: “Avenue Q,” a one-set puppet show about misfits whose theme song is “It Sucks to Be Me.” One would think, at first, he’d have little interest in the travails of Princeton, at sea with a degree in English, and the assorted freaks of his neighborhood. After all, this is the man who, through his expensive arena spectaculars, from Siegfried & Roy to Cirque du Soleil’s “O,” helped entertainment earn equal footing with gambling as a revenue generator in Las Vegas.

But sitting in his office, flanked by his German shepherds, Palo and Sela, Wynn passionately insists the show fits in with his “back to the basics” philosophy at the Wynn. Well, as “back to the basics” as a $2.7-billion hotel can be.

“Nobody in their right mind thinks they have to produce a bigger Cirque-type show,” he says, popping a breath tab in his mouth and ignoring the glass of water brought to him by one of the many assistants who come and go in the hush of the executive offices, hidden in the Wynn’s shopping wing where shirts can retail for $1,400. “I wanted a counterpoint to all that. What was missing was wit and the simple truth of theater -- that primal, deep, emotional contact between the audience and performer.”

Tony Awards notwithstanding, “Avenue Q” is no slam dunk. Unlike, say, “Mamma Mia!,” it doesn’t feature one pop hit after another. At a press conference a couple of weeks ago, a Vegas pundit suggested privately that some of Wynn’s Strip rivals thought that he was “out of his ... mind” to present such a modest offering. Would a two-hour puppet show even be noticed in the glare of myriad attractions brutally competing for the entertainment dollars of the 40 million tourists who visit Vegas annually?

Also raising the stakes is that Wynn’s bet on “Avenue Q” is being placed in his comeback year. After divesting in 2000 from his Mirage Resorts empire, which included the flagship Bellagio, he returned this year with his eponymous hotel. Although the hotel itself has largely exceeded expectations, its signature aqua-spectacular, “Le Reve,” directed by Franco Dragone, has been a rare public setback. The $90-million venture, which includes a 2,087-seat custom-built theater, opened in April to such a poor response from critics and audiences that it has only recently increased to seven performances per week and will have to wait until next month before going to the 10-per-week schedule that assures profitability.

But Wynn faced the same sort of skepticism when he first introduced Cirque du Soleil to Las Vegas in 1993 with “Mystere,” also created by Dragone, at Treasure Island. “It took four months for the show to catch on,” he says, adding that he’s confident the changes he and Dragone are making with “Le Reve,” which will be complete by next month, will turn the show’s fortunes around.

“Mystere,” of course, led to an avalanche of other exclusive Cirque and Cirque-like spectaculars. After 12 years, “Mystere” is still going at Treasure Island, but Wynn almost closed it before it ever opened.

“Boy, was I nervous,” he now says of “Mystere,” recalling how he was so agitated at an early run-through that all he could do was pace and fume in the aisles while the Cirque du Soleil creative team blanched. “Then the clouds suddenly parted, and I woke up: I can’t argue with these guys, I’m a passenger on their bus. I’ve got to trust the way they work.”

Is he just as nervous as “Avenue Q” readies for its much-hyped opening? “Of course,” he says. “But I’m acting on the premise that good theater is good entertainment and has equal drawing power in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or Las Vegas. There is no such thing as a ‘Vegas audience,’ that’s foolish and irrelevant. What they want is what everybody else wants: more choices.”

What Wynn has always wanted -- and managed to attract -- is the sophisticated, well-heeled crowd because, as he says, it simply has more money to throw around. The hotelier is betting that this demographic will be as attracted to musical comedy as it was to his Cirque productions. “People want to be transported,” he says. “Now, there’s the circus-type act where you just stand back and admire the skill. Then there’s the type of show where you identify with the performer.” With that, Wynn breaks into an “Avenue Q” song about Princeton’s quandary: “What do you do with a B.A. in English?”

A LOVE OF THEATER

WYNN’S sole degree is a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania. And the stage is in his blood. His paternal grandfather was Jacob Weinberg, a vaudevillian who once, in his 70s, showed his young grandson how he would cross the stage on his hands. Jacob’s son, Michael, a sign painter and inveterate gambler, passed up show business to run a chain of bingo parlors. At 21, Steve Wynn took over the family business after his father died suddenly. A bingo concessions eventually became the seeds of an empire that first established a beachhead in Atlantic City before staking its claim in Vegas.

While he was a student at Penn, however, another seed -- a love of theater -- germinated. He remembers seeing many of the classics -- “My Fair Lady,” “The Sound of Music,” “West Side Story” -- at theaters in Philadelphia with Elaine Pascal, the woman who would become his wife and business partner of over 40 years. “I know the power of Rex Harrison as professor Henry Higgins,” he says of the original star of “My Fair Lady.” “I remember sitting there and thinking, ‘Please don’t let this end.’ ”

That rare feeling wasn’t what Wynn expected when attending “Avenue Q” on Broadway in early 2004. “I had my show-me, deliberately negative mind-set on,” he says. But he was immediately won over by “Avenue Q’s” unpretentiousness and started thinking about it as an attraction for his new resort.

“But the yellow light was blinking,” he says. “I thought, ‘Wait, wait, wait.’ ” Perhaps he was letting his emotions get away with my good business sense? He sought a reality check from Elaine, who, one gathers, is the cooler head in the partnership. Ten days later, he took his wife to see “Avenue Q.”

Elaine Wynn, sitting in an office suite adjacent to her husband’s, feared audiences would not be sophisticated enough to appreciate the nuances of the show. “Are we aiming too high? But that was my feeling at first about Cirque,” she says. “It’s a puppet show, but it’s clever and not sappy. It filled a market niche that wasn’t being served in Las Vegas.” That includes, she adds, a younger audience that the show has been drawing in New York since it opened.

Once Elaine gave her stamp of approval, Wynn aggressively pursued rights to “Avenue Q,” offering to build a new theater for the show. Negotiations began months before the puppet musical would pull an upset by beating the heavily favored “Wicked” for the best musical Tony.

“Steve came into the meeting singing songs from the show,” says Robyn Goodman, who co-produced the show with Kevin McCollum and Jeffrey Seller of “Rent” fame. “When Kevin first told me that Steve was interested, I thought, ‘This is totally crazy.’ Vegas? But Steve was very persuasive. He demanded no changes; we could play at the full length. Touring is hard. This made it a lot easier on everybody.”

Part of that persuasiveness was money. Goodman says the $5-million figure is erroneous but won’t say in what way (when it comes to discussing financials, apparently what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas). But she admits the deal is potentially far more lucrative than a tour.

News of “Avenue Q’s” plans, announced shortly after the 2004 Tonys, created a backlash in the theater community. “Sure they were [mad] until they saw how much money they could make in Vegas,” says Goodman. “There really isn’t a stigma to playing Vegas anymore. Now everybody on Broadway is looking to make their own deals.”

Indeed, Wynn and his peers are sending dollar signs dancing in the eyes of Broadway producers and writers. It’s a bit too easy to look at Vegas as a Faustian bargain for the theater; it’s not like Stephen Sondheim and Adam Guettel (the Tony-winning composer of “The Light in the Piazza”) need apply. “I’ve always felt a little inadequate in understanding Sondheim,” Wynn says. And while purists may be aghast that “Hairspray” and “Spamalot” are being cut down from two-plus-hour running times to 90 minutes, that might not be such a bad thing. More than one critic pointed out that the Broadway “Spamalot” churns out its fun a little bit longer than need be.

Eric Idle, the former Pythonite and writer-lyricist for the show, apparently agrees. Wynn says it was Idle’s idea to cut “Spamalot” to 90 minutes, allowing it to play 12 performances a week. And, he says, it was Idle who won Mike Nichols’ approval for the changes. At about $100 per ticket in a custom-built 1,600-seat theater, the show stands to gross nearly $2 million a week, about double the amount it is making on Broadway. (Through the show’s press agent, Idle along with the rest of the “Spamalot” team refused to comment.)

“Look, it’s a joint venture,” Wynn says. “I’m not being selfish. I tell them, ‘OK, you take the show and play it everywhere and you’re undercutting your own performance. Run the numbers. If it’s better for you to go and tour, go ahead and tour. I’m not going to buy a show people can see in L.A. or Phoenix. They’re my markets. I want people to come to me to see these shows.”

Indeed, some producers have crunched the numbers and given Vegas a pass. “Wicked” companies are grossing as much as $4 million a week on the road. And “Mamma Mia!” producer Judy Craymer says Wynn was “quick off the mark,” negotiating with her as early as 1999 to forgo a national tour after the show’s New York opening. “Maybe it was naivete or maybe it was bravery, but I thought that ‘Mamma Mia!’ had a different mileage in it,” she says. “Mamma Mia!” eventually went to Vegas anyway for a very profitable run.

But even some of his competitors concede the wisdom of Wynn’s strategy. “Steve’s very sharp and very quick. Nobody even knew he was negotiating on ‘Avenue Q,’ ” says Scott Zeiger, chairman and chief executive of Clear Channel Entertainment Productions, which would have toured “Avenue Q” in selected markets and is losing out on “Spamalot” in its Phoenix and Southern California venues. “I feel terrible about losing ‘Spamalot’ in two of our best markets. But Clear Channel, as an investor in both ‘Q’ and ‘Spamalot,’ is very happy. The upside is extraordinary.”

Wynn doesn’t waste any tears on his competitors. “Hey, what’s that song from ‘Annie’?” he asks. “ ‘It’s a hard-knock life’? We’re competing!” But Wynn is stung when it’s suggested that he’s making it more difficult -- not to mention expensive -- for the Southern California theater lover on a strict budget. After all, had there been a Steve Wynn-type entrepreneur blacking out shows in Philadelphia in the ‘50s, he might never have had the chance to see all those musicals that meant so much to him.

“Are you really going to play that on me -- make me feel guilty about the poor people of Pasadena?” he asks incredulously. “This is unconscionable -- you’re playing the pity card.” He playfully glances at his press agent, enjoying this game of cat and mouse. “First of all, there are no poor people in Pasadena. And second, what about me? What about all the people who need jobs in Las Vegas? Don’t they have the right to be employed and to be entertained too?

“Look, I want to be compassionate and kind. I’m a Buddhist. But as the Dalai Lama said to me, personally, ‘Steve, it’s OK to be a businessman as long as you know your only chance for happiness and satisfaction is to the extent you offer the people who work for you the chance for a better life. But it’s OK for you to compete ferociously. And if you make money, that’s good too; otherwise the world would be filled with starving monks, which wouldn’t help anybody.’ In other words, there is an element of competition, and that means people just have to save their money. It’s certainly cheap enough to come here.”

Given their inability to compete with Wynn’s largesse, rival producers are taking comfort that there are only so many theaters he can build, though he will presumably have more space when he opens a hotel-casino in Macao, a gambling mecca near Hong Kong, and completes an addition to the Wynn. And who knows, he muses, his property adjacent to the Wynn could remain a golf course or there could be 12 more theaters. “The future of Las Vegas is a conversation about entertainment, not gambling,” he says.

Does that mean he would create original musicals, either for Las Vegas or for New York? “Absolutely, in a minute,” says the man who counts David Merrick, the ruthlessly brilliant theater producer, among his heroes. “With the right creative people, I’d invest, produce, back it just so I could have the upper hand and not have to ask anybody to turn their back on touring.”

Unlike Merrick, however, Wynn has to answer to stockholders, who might not share his enthusiasm for an art form that has an 80% failure rate. Although he regularly denigrates Broadway as straitjacketed by decaying theaters and strict unions, he acknowledges that “the play is the thing,” that no amount of money or hydraulic lifts can make up for the sheer creative energy.

Wynn got a firsthand lesson when in 1998, he commissioned Jerry Herman, his favorite Broadway composer, to write an original musical, “Miss Spectacular,” for the theater in the Bellagio. A budget was drawn up: “I don’t remember the exact figure -- 10, 12, 15, 18, 20 million -- whatever it was, we were going to do it right,” he says. Though he loved the score and recorded a concept album of the songs, his project foundered when, despite repeated attempts, a satisfying script proved to be elusive. “I learned a strong lesson: Don’t start with the score first,” he says.

One gathers there will be other attempts. In typical fashion for a man who prides himself on being “one part artist, one part businessman,” he is willing to push musical theater in Vegas as far as he can. “The price of being courageous in Las Vegas is less risky than other places. So why not go for it?”

He says he can envision a not-too-distant future in which Broadway-type musicals are nurtured in Vegas. “I see money and creativity gravitating here because of our importance and the possibility of a payoff. For a show to open here and then go to Broadway will someday seem like the most natural thing in the world.”

On the face of it, that might seem an outlandish statement. But then, who could envision that a silly little film that cost all of $400,000 would evolve, courtesy of Wynn, into a $50-million Vegas production: “Spamalot”?

Contact Patrick Pacheco at calendar.letters @latimes.com.