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The stage show is coming back to Atlantic City casinos
AP
Photo
In a March 2, 2011 photo, French singer Yoland Sirard dances with a costumed dancer during one of the performances in the show, "Moonshine Follies" at Resorts Casino Hotel, in Atlantic City, N.J. This year Atlantic City is reaching back to the past to bring back stage shows as a way to drtaw more customers as it struggles with competition all around it.
By WAYNE PARRY
Associated Press
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.
On the stage, six leggy showgirls cavorted in shimmery black-sequined bras and skirts that were little more than ambitious panties. They twirled plumes of large black feathers in a Rockette-style kick line as one of them sang “Bye-Bye Blackbird.” (Who cares that they were ostrich feathers? And really, who was even looking at the feathers?)
This casino spectacle, titled “Moonshine Follies,” was unfolding on a stage not in Las Vegas, which is synonymous with the elaborate stage production, but in Atlantic City, where such shows died out in the 1990s after a comparatively brief East Coast run.
Now, the nation’s second-largest gambling resort is taking a page from its past: The stage show is coming back in Atlantic City. Casino executives see the shows as a valuable marketing tool, and a cheaper option than top-name entertainers that play for a night or two before moving on. And customers see the shows as a welcome return to the Atlantic City they once knew and loved — almost like theatrical comfort food.
Seven of Atlantic City’s 11 casinos now have regular stage shows or will be rolling them out in coming months.
“You get five or six nights a week of entertainment versus one, for the same price or less,” said Don Marrandino, eastern division president of Caesar’s Entertainment, which owns four Atlantic City casinos. “We’ll get more people into the places with these shows and create new excitement. That’s our leg up on Pennsylvania and surrounding markets.”
“Moonshine Follies” costs Resorts Casino Hotel about $50,000 a week to produce. Many of the tickets are given away free as “comps,” or complimentary inducements to customers to choose Resorts as opposed to the competition.
“It brings bodies in the door,” said Resorts president Dennis Gomes. He said the show averages 500 people a night on weekdays and fills the 1,300-seat theater on weekends.
“The value of those 500 people coming in for a show is being felt from a gaming and food and beverage revenue standpoint,” he said.
When casino gambling debuted in New Jersey in 1978, Resorts was the only legal casino outside Nevada. Eventually, many of the casinos stopped hosting their own house shows, focusing on bringing in big stars for a one- or two-night stand.
That worked for a while, when Atlantic City was the only game in town unless you wanted to hop a plane to Nevada. But the resort lost its East Coast monopoly when casinos opened in Connecticut. The advent of casinos in neighboring Pennsylvania in late 2006 touched off a decline that still plagues Atlantic City more than four years later. The resort has lost nearly a third of its business since then, falling from $5.2 billion in 2006 to $3.6 billion in 2010.
Nowadays, any opportunity to bring more people through the casino doors is being pursued.