Barry Manilow Presents Copacabana 1990-1991

Source: http://scootertalk.blogspot.com/2007/10/gloucester-county-times-woodbury-nj.html

GLOUCESTER COUNTY TIMES
Woodbury, NJ
September 28, 1990

COPACABANA!

Manilow leaves piano to direct musical in AC

By John Barna

ATLANTIC CITY – Barry Manilow wanted to chat about his first stage production – a 75 minute musical built around his song Copacabana.

And during a press conference at Caesars Hotel and Casino, the media wanted to question the singer-songwriter’s decision to do something other than touring and cutting records.

"I like being in the background," suggested Manilow.

"Background?" one reporter shot back in a puzzled tone from her lounge seat.

After 2 ½ years on the road crooning ballads and an occasional uptempo ditty to a middle-of-the-road audience, Manilow has "retired" to the role of directing a stage version of Copacabana.

I did not want to stop working," he said, peering behind wire-rimmed glasses that he never wears on stage. Yet, Manilow acknowledged that the grind of picking up his piano and hitting a new city had gotten the best of him.

At the same time, according to casino Senior Vice President Howard Bacharach, Caesars was looking for a winter stage act that differed from the standard, warmed-over, one-time Broadway musical fare served up at Atlantic City’s dozen gaming halls.

The resulting marriage is Barry Manilow Presents Copacabana – the first original musical of Atlantic City’s casino era that has begun its indefinite run in Caesars’ Circus Maximus Theater. Yes, it is centered around the life of Lola, the showgirl whose saga of romance with a dude named Tony sparked a hit record 12 years ago.

Based on a dress rehearsal of the opening production number showcased earlier this week to an audience of about 20, the show has twice the voltage of some of Manilow’s concerts.

The pace is frantic. The barren, black stage set becomes a vibrant hue of the rainbow as nine "showgirls" adorned in yellow, pink, purple, radiant orange and gold arrive to entertain a handful of people seated at four tables for a stage show. In the background is a multi-visual presentation of scenes from Caribbean festivals.

Expect plenty of percussion.

Take note of the attention to detail, like the dazzling reflection of light on the pinky ring worn on Rico’s – the other star in this lover’s tale – right hand as he watched Lola perform with the other showgirls.

Manilow obviously has not merely lent his name to something and walked away, not caring how it is presented to the public.

"As a musician, I am torn between the two (live and canned soundtracks)," Manilow acknowledged. "But you cannot tell there is not an orchestra sitting in a pit."

Bacharach said the decision to stick to a recorded soundtrack was a matter of dollars. The casino had just so much to spend – he was not saying how much – and Manilow’s troupe understood the logistics. Besides, Bacharach contended it would take "40 musicians" to stage the production Manilow wanted. He said the casinos have had difficulty in the past staging shows with 20 musicians performing.

There also was a basic decision that the "name characters" in this production are all in the background.

Manilow’s two long-time collaborators – Jack Feldman and Bruce Sussman – and choreographer Dorian Sanchez (she danced in the movie Dirty Dancing and choreographed The Dirty Dancing Concert Tour along with Cher’s last stage tour) are among those involved in the project.

At least they have had experience watching and directing instead of being at center stage with a spotlight shining down on them.

For Barry Manilow, this is a different experience.

"Putting a show together is not a new thing for me," Manilow said. He said the difficulty was in adjusting to being a director and "developing a working relationship with actors."

"I have a brand new respect for directors," he said with a laugh.

Manilow said he and his collaborators at first worried that assembling Copacabana for the stage was going to be a more difficult task than it was.

"We thought there would be more bumps in the road," he said. Three months ago, when the basic work was being done to shape the production, "we thought it would take longer."

"There is a little tape in our heads that says we cannot do it. You have to turn the tape off."

"On Saturday, you were hearing the tape," Sussman told Manilow.

Sussman said the production differs from other shows in the tight timing required to go from idea to rehearsals to launching the production before an audience.

"Normally you would have months and months (of rehearsal) and go on the road," he explained. "The whole process has been condensed to a couple of weeks."

Part of that condensation was reworking the basic theme of Copacabana, he said.

"We started with the characters but the rest was a blank page," Sussman said.

The one advantage of a stage setting, Feldman explained, was "the piece itself is larger than life and lends itself better to the stage."

"It lends itself to a casino. It has all the glitz," Manilow said.

Manilow chuckled as he recalled auditions for the cast of 25 – five principals and 20 dancers.

"It scared everybody to come into an auditorium and see me there," he said. "I don’t know how they do it, to come in day after day and get rejected."

PHOTO: Sean Sullivan as Tony Starr with the Copa Girls

The actual work of putting the production together started on Labor Day. Manilow has been at Caesars since.

"I don’t think I’ll ever leave," he said. "I cannot imagine leaving."

Just how long it will be before the production leaves Caesars is unknown. Obviously, the audience’s acceptance will gauge that.

But will the flock of admirers that fills whatever arena Manilow is performing at come to a show that he directed and for which he assembled the score, but does not appear in?

"We’ve tried to make it very clear. We tell them I am not in it," he said.

Manilow suggested that the show "is awfully powerful" – a factor that will draw the necessary crowds to sustain its run.

Still, there were a dozen fans outside the theater hallway this week hoping for a glimpse of Manilow and his theater company. Among them was a New York schoolteacher who was playing hooky for the day. By the way, he said he has been to 73 Manilow concerts.

Seventy-three?

So when will this gentleman be able to attend concert No. 74?

"I’ll be out on tour any old year," Manilow said, declining to commit himself to a concert tour.

There is a new album out – Because It’s Christmas – which arrived in stores this week.

But no tour plans.

"I just think I’ll grow a beard," he mused. "We just want to get this thing on its feet."

~~~
Barry Manilow Presents Copacabana is on an indefinite run at Caesars Hotel and Casino, Arkansas Avenue at the Boardwalk, Atlantic City. Tickets are $17.50. The basic show schedule is: 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 8:30 and 11:30 p.m. Saturdays and 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. Sundays. There will be several nights during October and November when the production will not be performed while other acts occupy the Circus Maximus Theater.

Originally posted 10/14/2007 10:28:00 AM


Source: http://scootertalk.blogspot.com/2007/10/press-atlantic-city-nj-june-15-1991-ad.html

THE PRESS
Atlantic City, NJ
June 15, 1991

Ad appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 19, 1991

Curtains for Copa at Caesars

By David Spatz

ATLANTIC CITY – With reputations at stake and more than $1 million in pre-production costs, Barry Manilow presents Copacabana opened at Caesars last September with all the hype a casino could muster when it becomes partners with one of the most popular stars in pop music.

But at 10 p.m. Sunday, the curtain will ring down quietly, without fanfare – and apparently, prematurely – on the show that was supposed to revolutionize casino entertainment.

"The show has run its course," Caesars spokeswoman Caroline Coyle said. "Our entire customer base has seen it, and we didn’t think it could sustain (business) during the summer."

Although the show had originally been booked for a 20-week run, both Manilow and Caesars expected it to last a lot longer.

Caesars officials privately felt the show would have been a viable entertainment vehicle for at least a year. Manilow, who based the musical on his 1977 hit At The Copa, was even more optimistic, he; he envisioned a Boardwalk run of up to two years before taking the show on the road.

"(Manilow) still hopes to take the show on the road, but nothing’s been confirmed," Coyle said. The singer-songwriter turned producer-director is expected to arrive at Caesars today to close the show he opened on Sept. 27.

Although Caesars officials have described the show as "very successful," box office figures tend to dispute that.

Last month, the casino proudly announced that 100,000 customers had seen the show after around 200 performances. Based on eight shows a week, minus a week or two for holiday breaks and occasional weekend headliners, that would be an average of about 500 people per show, less than half the capacity of Caesars 1,100-seat Circus Maximus Theatre.

A source inside Caesars, however, said the estimate "is being very generous."

"On some nights, there were barely 100 people in the room," the source said.

One possible problem – and one that Caesars had been cautioned about from the start – was that Manilow’s name was part of the show’s title even though he never appeared in the production. Although Caesars was careful to note in its advertising that Manilow didn’t appear in the show, the disclaimer was easily missed.

"More than a few people complained that it was misleading," the same source said. "Look, you get some hick from middle America in here and all he sees is the name Barry Manilow in great big letters. He gets so excited that he’ll be able to see Barry that he doesn’t bother to read the fine print."

Praised by some critics and panned by others, the show did live up to its billing as a cross between a legitimate Broadway-style book musical and a fleshy and feathery casino revue, which is what Manilow had in mind when he put the program together.

But even if it was the most popular thing since sliced bread, Manilow, who celebrates his 45th birthday on Monday, knew his limitations, or at least the limitations imposed on him by critics.

"If I tried to put this show on Broadway, the critics would crucify me," he said in an interview before the show opened.

Because of his reputation for pulpy and commercial sounding love songs, critics loved to use Manilow for target practice as both a recording artist and live performer.

But enough fans worshiped the entertainer, attended enough concerts and bought enough albums to make him a wealthy man twice: Once during the late 1970s, after which he lost his fortune, and again in the mid-1980s with his musical rebirth as a jazz-pop artist who earned praise from the critics who once made panning him a competition in scathingly creative writing.

Manilow admitted he was taking an artistic risk by turning a popular song into a quasi-legitimate musical. However, he felt he minimized the odds by putting a ton of money – both his own and Caesars – into the show’s production values.

The show was lit by the best lighting system on the market; more than 200 costumes were created from scratch; and while he’d have preferred to use live musicians, the show’s pre-recorded music tracks were done on digital tape, making it virtually impossible for an audience to tell the difference.

And the non-Equity – or non-union – cast featured some excellent performers including Hillary Turk, who played Lola, and former casino lounge band singer Lou DeMeis, who played bad guy Rico to sleazy perfection.

"Taking a risk in this business is the only way to work," [Manilow] said. "The alternative is being (artistically) dead. I'm not saying that everyone should take foolish risks. With the people I have working with me, I feel very protected in this arena. I don't think I'm putting anyone else at risk except me, and I really don't think I could fail big enough to hurt people."

Originally posted 10/15/2007 09:50:00 AM