VIVA LAS VEGAS!

By RICHARD CORLISS LAS VEGAS

There's sorcery everywhere on the vast stage of EFX. Merlin does battle with Morgana--she with her six-ton mechanical dragon, he with an even more gigantic fire breather. From beyond the grave Harry Houdini romances his wife with a misty melody and a huge set that flies away in a spectral swooosh! H.G. Wells zips through the centuries in his Time Machine and escapes the clutches of the dreaded Morlocks in a getaway that puts the Miss Saigon helicopter to shame. And at the end another magician, the EFX! Master, sits atop a crystalline globe held in a huge hand. He's an imp who works miracles.

EFX boasts Broadway talent galore, beginning with Michael Crawford, the first Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Opera; here he plays all the lead male roles. The show has glorious sets by Tony luminary David Mitchell (Barnum, Annie) and 500 phantasmagorical costumes by Theoni Aldredge (A Chorus Line, Dreamgirls). Among the contributors to its original score is, well, Don Grady, whose first eminence was as the hunkiest of Fred MacMurray's three TV sons but who now writes lush, hummable ballads. Finally, EFX has that cosmic expanse of spirit, that lift of a driving dream, that wily, woozy pretentiousness, that have marked the boffo Broadway musical ever since Cats crept into town nearly 13 years ago.

Except that EFX isn't on Broadway. It's 2,240 miles off Broadway, at the MGM Grand, in a desert stopover called Las Vegas. Well, somebody has to put on musical spectacles, and Vegas has a dozen or so. This year, while Manhattan's mainstream theaters could find only a single original tune show--and that, Lloyd Webber's Sunset Blvd., was an import from London and Los Angeles--Vegas' casino hotels are proving that the old form still has sass, vibrancy and audience appeal. And size. And how! Four big productions will have opened by Memorial Day: EFX, the magic show Spellbound, a permanent edition of The Great Radio City Music Hall Spectacular and Splash II: The Voyage of a Lifetime! "In Las Vegas," says producer Jeff (Splash) Kutash, "it's always one-upmanship." For now Broadway is ancient history; Vegas is the musical theater of the coming millennium.

It may also be the Disney World of the 21st century. Scrubbed (or at least whitewashed) of its reputation as a Mob town infatuated with scuzzy strippers and sleazy comics, Las Vegas today is a leading family-resort destination, with theme parks, water parks and high-tech arcades in nearly every new hotel. And where families go, wholesome entertainment follows. That's one reason the Flamingo Hilton, the house that gangster Bugsy Siegel built, hired the Rockettes, whose high kicking and higher kitsch remind us that their brand of dance is as much a part of 20th century culture as anything choreographed by Balanchine or Berkeley.

Whether it's the Rockettes or the other Broadway and off-Broadway shows that Vegas imports (Guys and Dolls, Starlight Express, Forever Plaid, Beehive), the target audience is the middle-aged tourist with a fat wallet in need of slimming. And Vegas has hit the bull's-eye. In 1994 the flood of tourists swelled 20%, to 28.2 million visits, and entertainment revenues soared almost 16%, to $230 million.

No wonder the local Kublai Khans are planning more. Treasure Island's Steve Wynn, who also owns the tony Mirage, is ready to break more banks with his new Beau Rivage resort next year. The Grand's Kirk Kerkorian, when he's not plotting his takeover of Chrysler, looks at plans for his new hostelry, New York-New York, whose facade will be in the shape of the Manhattan skyline. Even the Walt Disney Co. is rumored to be looking at Las Vegas property-though Disney chairman Michael Eisner denies any interest in bringing Disney to Vegas.

Well, Vegas has already done that for Eisner. The town is Disneyfied in two important ways. One is that its shows have the Good-Lord-what-next? suspense of a Disney World thrill ride. Or as Tom Bruny, the MGM Grand's director of advertising, explains the challenge of creating EFX: "We knew we had to produce a 'gee whiz' show, but we didn't want it to be just a 'gee whiz' show."

Vegas follows another Disney dictum: it sets out to create entertainment the whole world will pay to see. The aim is pure show-and-tell: it shows with grand images and lavish costumes; it tells with familiar songs. A cuddly optimism replaces the mordant philosophizing of Tony Award-winning shows. People don't go to Vegas for a Sondheim musical (indeed, not many go to Broadway for one). Vegas shows are zippy, out-of-mind experiences aimed at vacationers of all classes and countries. "You have to have a certain style of show here," says EFX! master Crawford. "When half your audience doesn't speak English, you have to be very visual."

Vegas is constrained by tradition as well as by language. Just as most Broadway musicals look for their material in only a few places (old movies and old songbooks), so the crafters of Vegas extravaganzas find their inspiration in venerable forms of entertainment. The shows may stress magic or music or circus acts or ladies of the chorus, but all are essentially revues. Think of a zillionaire's R-rated TV variety hour: The Ed Sullivan Show with bosoms. And for the sound track, turn on an encyclopedic oldies station that goes from Gershwin to Grease.

Spellbound--with the generically suave illusionism of Mark Kalin and Jinger Leigh--also features an impressive trio of slow-motion acrobats called Human Design. The Tropicana's Folies-Bergere revue, freshened regularly since 1959, has a nicely erotic trapeze duo, the Cavarettas, a merger of Ringling Bros. with TV's Red Shoe Diaries.

Enter the Night, at the Stardust, has a harder edge--the men sing like Michael Bolton and dress like Fabio--but behind the crass is class: Cindy Landry and Burt Lancon, who were pairs silver medalists in the 1994 U.S. Open figure-skating championships, reimagine the Cavarettas' routine on a tiny ice rink. The best variety package is still Jubilee!, now in its 14th year at Bally's. Its huge, handsome sets and gargantuan production numbers (Samson and Delilah, the Sinking of the Titanic, a World War I dogfight)--with a few bites of chaste cheesecake--would make Flo Ziegfeld cheer.

He might seem a piker compared with Vegas entrepreneurs. They not only think big and spend bigger; they are also eager to itemize their profligacy. No Broadway musical has cost as much as $20 million, and if it did, no Broadway producer would say so. But Vegas is a place where gamblers brag about their winnings, and their losings. Liberace--the patron saint of Gaud Almighty--used to motor onstage in his Rolls-Royce and declare that the Riviera Hotel was paying him $50,000 a week; he was like a child showing his mother a report card full of A's. Same with the Vegas master builders.

Wynn inaugurated the era of big-spender shows in 1990 with the Mirage's $28 million Siegfried & Roy, an astounding farrago of illusion and sorcery, acrobats and armies of the knights, vanishing tigers and elephants--and leather, leather everywhere. The evening now goes for $78.35 a ticket. With the possible exception of an all-night masseuse, this is the priciest entertainment on Broadway or the Strip. But Siegfried & Roy remains a huge hit.

S&R-style majesty and grandeur are now elements of many Vegas shows. Some, especially Cirque du Soleil's $33 million Mystere at Treasure Island, have the otherworldly vision to transcend this outsize format. And some, like EFX--a $67 million investment, including $27 million to equip its theater with 3-D movie projection, a "fog wall" of steam and liquid nitrogen and hot-wired rumble seats--are content to give visitors a hell of a high-tech ride.

EFX may not be "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy," as the Barnum played by Crawford describes it. But it is the most Vegas-y show in town--a huge compendium of big shows from Broadway and Vegas. There are references to Crawford's earlier triumphs in Phantom and Barnum. As in Mystere, there are circus acts, liturgical and drum music, a giant climactic apparition. The Morlock battle is reminiscent of the pirate attack staged outside Treasure Island every evening. There's even a Siegfried & Roy joke, as well as the mandatory legerdemain and leggy chorines. See EFX and you've seen 'em all.

Vegas isn't the first entertainment town to discover that, ultimately, nothing is unique--except the producer's claims of uniqueness. Listen to Jeff Kutash describe Splash II, scheduled to open late next month at the Riviera. "This is the first truly interactive show!" he exclaims. "The audience will have a laser battle with the performers. We've waterized the whole theater-turned it into a giant submarine to take the audience on a tour of wonderful places like Atlantis and Shangri-La." You might think it difficult to get a submarine up the Himalayas--but in Vegas, nothing is impossible.

"A water show has its own niche," Kutash says, "which is the key to making it in Vegas. How many magic shows can you have, how many French shows, how many circus shows, before you become redundant?" Steve Wynn will test that premise next year. His Beau Rivage will feature a new production by Cirque du Soleil: a water show. It may be great. But to be a true Vegas show, it will have to be like nothing--and everything-you've seen before. With music.

--Reported by William Tynan/Las Vegas

With reporting by WILLIAM TYNAN/LAS VEGAS