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Mollison has brought Absinthe to Caesars Palace and Opium to the Cosmopolitan. Where will We Are Here wind up?
Thursday, April 9, 2020 | 10:30 a.m.
Australian producer Ross Mollison, whose Las Vegas-based Spiegelworld company has created hit Strip shows “Absinthe,” “Opium” and “Atomic Saloon Show,” says on the latest episode of the Sun on the Strip podcast that when entertainment returns to Las Vegas after the coronavirus pandemic subsides, it might be bigger and better than ever.
“Generally, everyone I’m speaking to is like, this is a nasty bump but it’s not going to stop us,” he says. “We’re all planning what happens when we get to the other side of it. The creativity this is going to unleash is going to be mind blowing. A lot of people have the luxury of extra time right now, and they’re sitting around dreaming, plotting, planning and thinking.
“As a friend of mine recently said to me, look, we’re carnies. We’re used to being broke. We’re used to having to dream something up to throw onstage to get everybody to come. We’ll be fine.”
Spiegelworld opened its latest comedic variety show “Atomic Saloon Show” last year after a successful premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, and Mollison says he was planning to duplicate that process with the next show, the disco-themed “We Are Here,” which is being developed with legendary guitarist, songwriter and producer Nile Rodgers as musical director and British choreographer and director Steven Hoggett at the helm.
“We were taking it to the festival in Sydney [Australia] in January, which I can announce now because we’ve canceled it,” Mollison says. “We were going to do a month in Sydney because Sydney in January is one of the closest things to Vegas. It’s just a party. Everybody goes crazy and nobody goes to work for a month. Everybody’s out on the harbor just having a blast.
“We thought, let’s go do disco in Sydney and then at the end of January transfer straight to Vegas. Once all this went down, it was just too hard to do that, but I think [the show] will be coming soon. I think when we come out of our hiatus here, we’re going to jump into that in a very quick way.”
Stay up to date on the company's shows at spiegelworld.com.
Listen to this and more on the Sun on the Strip, also available at Apple Podcasts.
