The Week in Review

Betting on Celine: Can Celine Dion Save Las Vegas? That's the questions posed in The Daily Beast posted last week. The article, by Tony Dokoupil and Ramin Setoodeh, notes that the recession-starved city is banking on the Canadian singer to bring the good times back. As they notes, 'During her prior run, from 2003 to 2007, Dion sold out more than 700 consecutive performances, smashing local records for total audience (nearly three million), and bringing in more than $400 million at the box office, more greenbacks than the Rat Pack, Liberace, and Elvis combined. This time around, she's being touted as a one-woman stimulus bill-worth at least $114 million a year and thousands of jobs, according to UNLV." It's a lot of pressure even for Dion and one wonders what she can accomplish that Cirque du Soleil can't. Still the power of her popularity should become clear in the couple of weeks, as the show undergoes its shakedown performances.

Awards in LA: The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards, honoring achievement in the theatre in Los Angeles and Orange County, were given out on March 14.

Design winners included K.C. Wikerson, doubly honored for the lighting and video of The Who's Tommy at La Mirada, at Chance Theatre; Brian Sidney Bembridge, scenic designer of The Good Book of Pedantry and Wonder, produced by The Theatre @ Boston Court and Circle X Theatre Company; Naila Aladdin Sanders, costume designer of Neighbors, at Matrix Theatre Company; and Peter Bayne, for the sound design of Opus, at the Fountain Theatre.

Who Killed the Music Business?: According to Jon Bon Jovi, it was Steve Jobs, who launched iTunes and changed things forever. In an interview with the Sunday Times of London, the rocker said, "Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to ten, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it. God, it was a magical, magical time I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: 'What happened?' Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business."