Barry Manilow says his Las Vegas residency offers more production value than anything he has been able to offer on tour.
Photo by Clint Karlsen.

Barry Manilow has been called a lot of things, not all of them nice. But he ventures to say that "oldies act" isn't one of them.

"Nobody's ever said that about what I do. And yet, I'm doing material that was created many years ago," the 58-year-old entertainer notes.

"I don't think I've ever been referred to as an oldies act, and frankly, they should."

Some might chalk that up to the stamina of his hits. Others might credit the showmanship that continues to sell his grandiose ballads to more than one generation of ticket-buyers.

Either bodes well for "Manilow: Music and Passion," an exclusive run at the Las Vegas Hilton that will have the pop icon's fans doing the traveling if they want to see him in the next 12 months.

In keeping with the new, not fully defined hybrid of theater and concert in Celine Dion and Elton John's Las Vegas shows, Manilow will offer "the biggest production I've ever had" for a new window into his old hits.

People who haven't kept up with either Las Vegas or Manilow might assume this is business as usual; a longtime Las Vegas performer phoning in a greatest-hits album.

Those who follow him more closely know better. "I think I would have stopped years ago if I had to do that," the singer said last week during a break in rehearsals for the show that debuted Wednesday.

And he was ready to stop touring after the tiresome travel and heavy production costs of summer's "One Night Live! One Last Time!" tour wore him down. "It was the road that had gotten to me," he says. "After 30 years of living out of suitcases, I just wanted my life back."

The tour was barely over when he got a call from comedian David Brenner, a longtime friend who became new Hilton owner Colony Capital's first entertainment commitment in the fall.

"David, I just unpacked," Manilow remembers saying. But he also recalled seeing Dion's "A New Day ..." opus at Caesars Palace, and thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice if I could continue to make music and entertain audiences but didn't have to go on the road?"

Now he figures to have both an easy puddle-jump to his home in Palm Springs, Calif., and the ability to delve back into the theatricality that's long interested him.

The new show harkens back to the "Swing Street" tour Manilow brought to the same Hilton stage in 1988. That show included scenery, rear-screen projections and costumed actors illustrating scenes from the singer's childhood and early career.

The Hilton is his favorite Las Vegas stage, "because (it) is the size of a football field. You can throw anything that you want on it. And yet the house is not enormous," he says of the 1,600-seat theater. "That's my favorite kind of house to perform to."

The set includes a sprawling bandstand and side stages to represent a piano bar and comedy club.

"I feel that the songs land more if I can bring them into my experiences or their experiences instead of saying, `Here's another one of my favorites.' I've never been able to do that," he says.

Link to rest of Story Here