After a soft opening, “Showgirls: An Unauthorized Musical Parody” officially welcomes audiences tomorrow night at the Majestic Repertory Theatre in the Downtown Arts District. The show, scheduled through March 8, gives a new spin to a campy cult classic and box office bomb that somehow still resonates in Las Vegas.
”We're playing with a movie that's 30 years old. People have strong preconceived notions of it,” founding artistic director Troy Heard says. “But it's a very old-fashioned drifter-comes-to-town, wants-to-make-good story. There’s a purity at the center of it. It’s about the American dream.”
The movie was infamously rated NC-17 and the production has its share of raunchiness and nudity, but “probably not in the way people expect,” according to Heard. The Majestic’s intimate performance room was remodeled to look like Cheetah’s, the long-gone Vegas strip club used as a filming location for the film.
“The show is naughty without being patently offensive,” Heard says. “We have fun playing with the material, but there's always a deeper level that works and makes these shows so sustainable, lending them to longer runs.”
The Majestic Repertory Theatre (which borrowed its name from one of the first theaters on Fremont Street) got a lot of attention for sending up the 90s teen horror genre with “Scream’d” (its biggest success) and “Craft’d,” which makes a Los Angeles debut at The Three Clubs next month. Another homegrown production, “Empanada Loca” (a contemporary spin on “Sweeney Todd”) is gearing up for a month-long run at North Hollywood's After Hours Theatre Company.
Here at home, the Majestic will continue its 10th season with Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” — playing it straight, but against the modern-day backdrop of a "No Kings" rally.
Looking back on a decade of local theater and interactive productions, Heard and his team have a strong legacy of championing local talent, surviving the pandemic with outdoor presentations, and collaborating outside the theater itself with Meow Wolf, Usher, and Jack Daniel’s.
“It's been a wild ride,” Heard says. “And it proves that in Vegas, there are things to do that you can't experience anywhere else.”
Tickets for “Showgirls: An Unauthorized Musical Parody” begin at $49.95. Showtime is 7 p.m.
