Tyson Beckford returns as guest host and star in Chippendales on Friday, Aug. 28, 2015, at the Rio.
Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas: It is the city where Beckford outlasts “Baz.”
The former is a model with scant stage and dance experience who sells out regularly as the guest star of Chippendales at the Rio. The latter is the highly proficient, widely appreciated musical that spent about a month at Light in Mandalay Bay before leaving Aug. 30 amid operational changes at the club.
A rocking adaptation of a trio of Baz Luhrmann movies, “For the Record: Baz” is replete with talent, expertly conceived and performed with great enthusiasm by a Broadway-caliber cast. It entered our market with a nearly bulletproof reputation for delivering a wonderful evening of entertainment and had previously wowed even the most discriminate audiences in Los Angeles.
But “Baz” has no home in Las Vegas, its prospects for finding a suitable venue still in the "discussions" phase..
But Tyson Beckford, he’s another story.
As long as Chippendales continues to lure the fit and famous as guest stars, the oft-shirtless heartthrob will have no trouble finding a gig.
“The guys have told me I’m the best guest host the show’s ever had, and that’s because I’m 100 percent in it,” Beckford said early in his current run in the show at the Rio. “And that’s because I am part of the team. I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been, and I know what it takes to be onstage.”
That is the simple, effective formula for Beckford, entering his final (scheduled) weekend with Chippendales. His sendoff nights are Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Chippendales has summoned guest hosts before Beckford, of course. Most recently, Ian Ziering took a break from fighting off sharks in tornadoes to spend two stints with the production. Ziering is an actor and stage performer; Beckford, conversely, is a model and sometime figure in music videos (most recently in Mariah Carey’s “Infinity”).
He also co-hosted the Bravo reality-TV competition “Make Me a Supermodel.”
None of that adds up to a successful stage career in Las Vegas, exactly, and Chippendales knows it. But what Beckford brings to the stage can be fairly compared to the appeal of Claire Sinclair in “Pin Up” at the Stratosphere — though I am fully aware of the gender divide here. But same as Sinclair was brought in for name value and her capacity to move her body effectively onstage, Beckford has proved that he can be choreographed in a way that is a hybrid of posing and full dance moves.
He needs not do much, either, just a trio of numbers. But Beckford’s mere arrival onstage draws a shriek from the predominately female (predominately besotted female, to be accurate) crowd filling Chippendales Theater. The screams are ear-splitting, and even one veteran member of the troupe told me after Beckford’s opening night, “You have seen Tyson and the Chipps on a Friday, and for us it doesn’t get any better than that.”
The Chippendales brand recognition has become multigenerational, a distinct advantage for the show in Las Vegas. Chippendales is a title that is self-evident. If you have to explain the show to someone, you’re likely not buying a ticket.
“For me, as a kid growing up, I used to see the billboards growing up, and I was like, “Man, I want to have a body like that,’ you know?” the 44-year-old Beckford says. “I liked Chippendales; I liked the fitness, the drive, that they had. The fact that you could see lean muscle and have a shape like that.”
Having logged more than a decade at the Rio, Chippendales is a steady production that sells well regardless of who is the guest host — or even with its set lineup. The show fits nicely in its 300-plus room, a $10 million venue that was built to specs for the show. The dozen cast members are a mix of vets and newcomers, and the show is always tweaking acts or adding ones.
In the meantime, the promising show that left Las Vegas this summer, “Baz” and its merry troupe of talented performers, is left in limbo. If there is a lesson here, it is likely that the room and the show need to work in concert. Maybe Chippendales would have worked in a place like Light, as a ticketed show, but “Baz” worked to overcome the challenges of that venue and is now once more trying to find a fit in Las Vegas. Don’t count on anyone spending $10 million to build a venue, either, not for a title that is still unproven in Las Vegas.
Maybe it’s unfair that “Baz,” as great as it is, can’t take hold in the same way a male revue has won over audiences. But don’t say that to the audience filing out of Chippendales after a night with Tyson Beckford. They probably can’t hear you anyway.
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.
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