Las Vegas Weekly

January 5, 2009 · 12:20 PM

It’s final curtain in Las Vegas for Stomp Out Loud, Mamma Mia! and Raw Talent Live

By Robin Leach

Photo: Tom Donoghue/www.donoghuephotography.com

Exactly 12 hours after the curtain came down on the final Mamma Mia! performance last night, the construction crew entered the Mandalay Bay theater at 8:30 a.m. today to start ripping it apart to prepare for the new inbound musical The Lion King. Work starts today on the front of the theater, the lobby, the retail store and the auditorium, but the Mamma Mia! crew have until the end of the month to clean out everything backstage, including sets and costumes.

It was the most memorable and bittersweet night in Las Vegas showbiz history, as three Strip shows came to an end simultaneously. Mamma Mia!, after nearly six years and 2,200-plus shows for 2 million ticket buyers, had its final curtain for the 30 cast members at Mandalay Bay. Stomp Out Loud was just two months short of two years at Planet Hollywood when it bid adieu, and Raw Talent Live at the Sahara decided to move on in another direction.

Click HERE for yesterday’s exclusive interview with Mamma Mia! lead Carol Linnea Johnson as she reflected on her three-year run in the Mandalay Bay musical. We joined her cast mates Vicki Van Tassel and Robin Baxter for last night’s cast after-party.

The Mamma Mia! cast seemed more exuberant in its final show, the band played louder, and the audience gave them more applause and standing ovations than ever before. Three members of the audience even showed up dressed in shining, sparkling spandex suits to match Donna & the Dynamos’ last Las Vegas performance.

Carol told me at the party: “Yes, there were tears on the stage. A couple of times, we choked up, but somehow we held it together. The audience made me feel like a homecoming queen. Somehow it all felt like the very first time I ever went on stage. I was going to make a very short thank-you speech on behalf of the cast, but the crew had arranged for silver confetti from our last-ever closing wedding scene to shower the audience, and that became it as they turned the mics off! Each one of the cast snuck in some back-heel kicks as a running gag through the show -- ‘kicking up our heels as we exit stage left!’

“It will feel strange and empty for a couple of days, but for my husband Don, life is good because we now get to go out in the evening as a couple instead of going off to work! The only mistake I made during the final show was that I almost forgot to take the check from one of my ex-lovers to pay for the wedding. He kept pushing it on me until finally I took it almost one minute late!”

Among the partygoers was actress Tina Walsh, who played the lead role of Donna for the first three-year run of the show. Tina now stars in Phantom -- The Las Vegas Spectacular at The Venetian. Tina told me: “I was working my show tonight, so I couldn’t get here for the final Mamma Mia!, but I made it to the party, and I did get to see it before it closed on my last day off -- New Year’s Eve.”

Also at the farewell was juggler and comedian Michael Goudeau, who stars in the Lance Burton show at the Monte Carlo. He told me that Tina and he had started out in showbiz together back in 1982 when they performed at the Astroworld entertainment park in Houston in Here’s Hollywood.

As Vegas Deluxe reported yesterday, Nancy and Ray Sommer of Henderson, who watched Mamma Mia! for the 74th time since they first attended the musical on their first wedding anniversary on Aug. 19, 2006, were special guests at the farewell party.

“We were both divorced,” Nancy told me. “It was my third marriage and Ray’s second. We had moved here from Southern California to start life anew. There was something that touched both of us the very first time we saw the show. It was about marriage and special love, and that continued on a personal level each time we saw it. If we were down or unhappy or it had been a bad day, this was the show that lifted our spirits. We both loved it with all our hearts!

“We spent our first two years in Vegas coming back time and again to see the show. We must have brought 60 friends over that time to see the show, some from as far away as Germany. They even returned two or three times to see it. It’s infectious that way. I think we’ve spent $14,000 on the tickets during that time. We’re upstanding citizens. We’re not weird -- there are much worse addictions, like drugs! Some of our friends thought we were insane until they came to see the show, and then they understood why we loved it so much.”

Nancy admitted that she cried one more time during the final show: “When Carol as Donna is brushing her daughter Sophie’s hair just before the wedding, she sings the ABBA song ‘Slipping Through My Fingers.’ That just gets me, and I’d brought extra tissues because I knew I’d lose it hearing it for the last time.”

Ray added as I was scribbling my notes: “We’re going to save a lot of money now! But we’ll really miss the show, the story, the music, the laughter and the cast. It will be a horrible, empty feeling. Yes, we’ll be back for The Lion King, but from now on we’ll have to rely on the CDs and the DVD of Mamma Mia!”

Our contributing photographer Tom Donoghue sat in on the final Planet Hollywood performance of Stomp Out Loud and captured this amazing photo gallery of their final night.

Tom told me: Stomp simply turned out the lights at Planet Hollywood. It was a stomp your feet and clap your hands kind of crowd at the final performance.” After a 22-month run from March 2007 to January 2009, the final broom swept across the stage.

Tom summed up: “The cast of Stomp Out Loud thanked the crowd with a toast with many a tear in their eyes. If you were lucky enough to have had seen any of the shows, you always had a great time with their special sounds, but this last one was one stompin’ production. They gave it everything they had.”

Spies tell me the cast is hoping to relocate to the Sahara where Raw Talent Live also ended its run last night. Show producer Nicole Durr is believed to be opening a spectacular new laser-light nightclub at the Palazzo this spring and will feature the Raw Talent cast as individual cabaret acts as part of that venue’s extraordinary entertainment lineup.

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