Broadway on the strip

‘‘I’d think to myself, ‘What is wrong with these people?’’’ says actor John Tartaglia, who finished his Avenue Q run last month. Audiences don’t laugh at jokes that have Broadway theatregoers doubled over. ‘‘Then I’d realise, these people may never have seen a Broadway show before. They don’t know how to react.’’

Some Broadway producers who were angling for casino deals are now watching and waiting. ‘‘Only one Broadway musical has really become a Vegas staple, and that’s Mamma Mia!, says a Tony-winning New York producer who has so far resisted the temptation of Sin City. Indeed, We Will Rock You, a London hit based on music by Queen, elicited yawns in Vegas, and Saturday Night Fever was an even bigger flop than it was on Broadway.

The trick is finding shows that appeal to fidgety tourists used to Cirque du Soleil-style spectacles. Some producers are shrinking their musicals for Vegas. Several numbers have been trimmed from Hairspray to make it a lean 90 minutes with no intermission. ‘‘The way we cut it and shaped it, it was more like launching a rocket,’’ says Fierstein.

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Harold Prince have restaged—and nearly halved—their two-and-a-half-hour Phantom of the Opera for its Vegas debut this May, and Spamalot will be similarly bite-size when it opens in early 2007. ‘‘There are very few Broadway shows that wouldn’t be better if they were cut down a bit,’’ says Alan Feldman, a vice-president of MGM Mirage, which owns the Luxor. Avenue Q may have learned its lesson: its producers are thinking of a nip and tuck, too.