Casino operator MGM Resorts is bringing live entertainment back to its Las Vegas casino properties, even as Nevada’s governor reminds residents that the only way to preserve the state’s long-term economy is avoiding “COVID fatigue.”
On Tuesday, MGM announced that seven live entertainment shows would return to three of its Vegas casinos starting November 6. The lineup includes David Copperfield’s Live The Impossible production at the MGM Grand, comedian Carrot Top at the Luxor Theater and the Thunder from Down Under pecs n’ sex revue at Excalibur’s Thunderland Showroom.
George Kliavkoff, MGM’s president of entertainment & sports, said eight months was long enough for entertainment to be absent from the Vegas strip. Kliavkoff said the relaunch of live entertainment was “an important first step” in Las Vegas reclaiming its title as the “Entertainment Capital of the World.”
Attendance will be capped at 250 guests per venue, with six feet of physical distancing between guests and 25 feet separating guests from performers (something the half-naked Aussies will likely appreciate after years of having their junk grabbed by juiced-up bachelorettes).
MGM’s renewed commitment to live entertainment came just days after it burnished its food & beverage offering via a new ‘dumping and noodle hotspot’ at its ARIA Resort & Casino. The globally celebrated Din Tai Fung restaurant group plans to handmake 10k dumplings per day to celebrate the brand’s arrival in Vegas.
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, who loosened the state’s large gathering policy earlier this month, warned residents this week that the state was facing an “alarming trend” of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations – the timing of which coincides with the easing of those in-person gathering limits.
Sisolak urged residents and out-of-state visitors not to get complacent regarding health and safety precautions, lest he be forced to reintroduce the wildly unpopular restrictions from which the state is only now coming out from under. Sisolak said he “hoped to never get” to that point, but “this virus doesn’t get fatigued. We can’t get tired, because the virus isn’t tired.”
