Tuesday, May 19, 1998 | 10:23 a.m.
They were plucked from the streets of New York and placed on the stage of New York-New York.
A year later, the cast of "MADhattan" is back out on the street following the close of the show's unexpectedly short 11-month run.
And that makes some of them sad, some of them glad -- and some of them hopping mad.
"For a lot of us, this was the dream," recalls Timothy Solomon, a "MADhattan" street dancer from the group 7 Deadly Sins. "A lot of the dancers hadn't made this kind of money before. It was like, 'I know I'm going to be here so I can splurge a little.' People were buying new cars, leasing condos. The day it ended, I've never seen such sad faces.
"The ironic thing," he adds, "was that they got us here, helped a lot of performers move here, but when it was over, they're not helping them move out. It was like, 'Oh, thank you and see you later.' "
Sasha Chervotkin, who performed the show's unicyclist act, is even more blunt with his assessment. "You want the truth?" he demands. "The company screwed me by this."
By ending his 18-month contract seven months early, Chervotkin is now unemployed and out $36,000 in promised earnings, trying to support his family and make payments on a brand new house. "It's not the best time for us right now," he says quietly.
Chervotkin is a Moscow native in the United States on a working visa, and therefore not eligible to collect unemployment. But he also can't apply for any other types of jobs to pay the bills, being restricted by his visa type to entertainment positions. And because the show closed in the middle of the season, he says, no shows are looking to hire replacements.
The show's producer, Feld Entertainment, a production powerhouse whose shows include Ringling Brothers circus and Siegfried & Roy, has promised to help its cast find new jobs.
"We've made some connections with people, got them additional work," Wayne Murphey, vice president of Las Vegas operations, says. "Of course, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink -- we can show them the talent, but it's always up to the other individuals to hire."
But Chervotkin says those pledges haven't been honored.
"I'm the unicyclist," he says, "and the company called me and said, 'do you want to train the elephants?' Everybody told us, 'guys, we're going to try to figure out how we can help you,' they told us when they're going to call -- and they never called back."
He and fellow cast member Jean Francois Detaille, a performance artist whose was expecting to earn an additional $100,000 through November, are considering suing for the unpaid remainder of their contract -- but are wary of the repercussions. "To sue Feld Entertainment," Chervotkin says mildly, "you have to have (guts)."
(Company policy prevents Murphey from commenting on contracts.)
"When I signed the contract with Mr. Feld, he told me the show's going to be here a minimum of five years," Chervotkin says bitterly. "I'm traveling all my life, I would like to stay in the same place for while. It was like my dream comes true, I bought the house, easy life, my daughter is in school. Everything like normal people.
"But," he shrugs, "we are Russians -- we know how to survive."
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On the flip side, David "Asheba" Wilson, a Trinidad native who served as the "Mayor of MADhattan," the show's master of ceremonies, figures: "Why be unhappy?
"When I found out they were going to close, it was no pain for me," he explains. "Look on the positive side. You were brought here for a year, and the (yearlong) contract was up.
"I came with the thought, if it closes, what would I do?" he explains. "If you didn't prepare, you're going to be scared. That's the key thing I was taught, always prepare. I'm in a 200 percent better place than I was financially."
Wilson is currently rehearsing his "world flavour" sound with his percussionist, former "MADhattan" band member Walter Gonzales. The two are looking for a gig for the band, called "Asheba and the One Vibe Band." In the meantime, he has done radio voice-overs in his distinctive reggae tongue and performed at last week's EAT'M music festival.
"I'm not unhappy, because there's so much more I can do," he says. "They've seen a piece of Asheba-- but not the real thing yet. The heartache was for the public," he adds, "that they were going to miss seeing a show like that."
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What really gets to Marc "Freeze" Lemberger is not that the show closed but that the cast was the last to know.
"The whole town was telling us before we knew," Lemberger, a 7 Deadly Sins dancer, gripes. "I heard about it four months ago from a restaurant owner who, when I told him I worked in 'MADhattan,' said, 'I'm sorry about the show closing.' "
In fact, rumors of the show's demise were swirling from the time it opened, Detaille says.
But cast members say they weren't officially informed until a month before the May 2 closing, when they were gathered together and told that the New York-New York hotel-casino had canceled the show because the new president, Dave Cacci, didn't like it. Feld Entertainment issued a press release quoting CEO Kenneth Feld, who explained that "it was not as strong at the box office as we anticipated."
The news was met with panic and dismay.
"You're talking about people moving families and changing lives," Solomon says. "I bought my car a month-and-a-half before they told us that we're not going to have jobs. I didn't move my family out until three months ago -- my son, daughter and wife. At the time, everything was O.K., we had a contract, (they said) a show like this can go on for four to five years. Negotiations were coming up, everyone wanted to return.
"Then, all of a sudden," he says quietly, "we got the news."
"I thought the show was going to go on and on, at least for two years," says Peter Pitofsky, a comedian who left Feld's clown college to join the show for seven months. "The only reason I came to Vegas was to do this show. I was very sad it closed. I see it as a crime. It breaks my heart."
What kills Solomon's spirit is driving around town and seeing the billboards still up, the vans still painted with the show's logo. "I'm thinking, maybe they did this just to trick us," he says wistfully. "Maybe the show's going to start up again."
That's not likely to happen locally. Producers have already torn down the set and are looking for another venue outside Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Michael Flatley's "Lord of the Dance" has been floated as a possible, though unconfirmed, replacement at New York-New York.
Cast members of "MADhattan" agree that attendance was disappointing, but still are debating what proved to be the show's fatal flaw: weak links in the line-up of talent, poor execution, lackluster promotion, or just the concept itself.
"Entertainment is pot luck," Murphey sighs. "I felt it was a good product. It was the right match of product and casino. I'd do it again. I really don't know why no one showed up. The people that saw the show liked the show."
But Lemberger, who sat in the lobby running a mock three-card Monty game after the show, beared the brunt of plenty of nasty comments. He recalls: "I heard people coming out of the show, commenting, 'This show sucks, I want my money back,' or 'There's too many black people in this show.' "
Still, he thinks the main problem was the lack of glitz.
"We had a great talent, but we weren't getting good crowds," he says. "It was too raw for the people. There wasn't enough production in there, lighting and lasers and boobs and costumes. People coming to Las Vegas expect that."
Detaille sums up why the idea never clicked with tourists. "For most people, a street performer is a bum," he says dismissively. "People don't come to Las Vegas to see misery."
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Now that the run has reached the end of the line, what is to become of these Manhattan transfers?
Many are, as they say euphemistically in the business, "taking a break."
"The first thing was, everyone went to file for unemployment," Solomon recalls. "It wasn't like everyone was thinking, I've got to go get a 9-to-5 job, it was that they were going to draw the unemployment. There were a lot of nervous people. A lot of upset people whose lives were altered."
"I feel sorry for guys from New York from the street," says Detaille, who had a thriving business as an artist and never really considered himself a street performer. "All these people came from New York and believed they were going to star in something, and were promised everything."
Lemberger waits in limbo to find out the severity of the back injury he suffered last month during a solo. His plane ticket was all ready to take him over to Europe and Japan, where he will go back to giving seminars in his break dance style of music.
Instead, he is holed up on his couch in Las Vegas, waiting for workman's compensation to kick in, until he heads back to New York next week.
"Hopefully, I'll be able to go. If not, I don't know what's going to happen," the 34-year-old laments.
One of the groups didn't survive the closure: the talented female a cappella group The Trembles has split up, with one member staying here, one moving to Vancouver to marry and one moving back to New York to pursue a career in comedy.
But some in the cast relished the chance to move on.
"I loved doing the show, but I'm not upset that it ended," singer Roger Ridley says. "I didn't expect it to go on forever. I was anxious to see what I can do out here on my own. I missed playing my own music, doing what I do -- I played one song in the show, and I'm used to playing 25 songs a day. I don't know what will happen, but I want to see."
Ridley is putting together a band with "MADhattan" band member Kevin Kelly and hopes to find a lounge to perform oldies tunes from the '60s.
Others in the cast seem to be thriving. Diva Michelle Weeks is touring Europe and plans to return to Las Vegas. Comedian Peter Pitofsky appeared on "The Tonight Show" three weeks ago and on Comedy Central's game show, "Make Me Laugh," while awaiting results from an audition for a kids' TV show in Los Angeles.
The members of the dance troupe 7 Deadly Sins are hoping to create a new show, called "Dance Class: The History of Dance" and place it in a showroom.
A few will perform at the World Cup in France next month. Two have just given birth. Three have opened a "hip-hop clothing store" called Pop One in Boulder City. One is producing an album. And three are featured dancers in a national TV ad campaign for The Gap called "Khaki's Groove."
Solomon ("Pop'in Pete"), Jerry Randolph ("Flow Master") and Stephen Nicholas ("Skeeter Rabbitt") were cast after a videotape of their dancing landed in the hands of the Gap's casting director. They went to Los Angeles in March to film the ad, which is currently on air and will run worldwide through the fall. "It's a big one," Solomon says. "It was pretty exciting."
Happy with their new homes, many have decided to linger.
"If you are popular in a place, why move?" says Wilson says. "I'm a world person, everywhere I go is my home. Las Vegas is a nice base. It's like a young New York of 50 years ago -- it's growing, so much change is happening, people from all parts of the world come here."
Solomon also decided to make Las Vegas home for now. "At the end, a lot of people said they're not going back to the Bronx, they'd rather stay here," he says. "Once you get past the Strip, it is a beautiful place. The horseback riding, lakes, mountains, my children just love this. Plus, I think Vegas is going to be the entertainment capital of the world in a few years -- and I want to be in on it."
But for some, New York's siren song was too strong to resist. The quartet called Spank is back in Manhattan doing gigs.
And yes, Tony "Pots and Pans" Walls has been spotted banging his utensils back in Times Square.
Marc Lemberger says he knows exactly what he'll do when he gets back to New York early next month: "Kiss the ground," he jokes.
"I'm a New Yorker, I can't help it, I have to be in a city," he explains. "The apartments are nice here, but once you go outside, there's really not that much to do. I just get edgier as time goes on."
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