It’s hard to imagine the Strip without Absinthe, the uproarious and edgy variety show set in the big white spiegeltent in front of Caesars Palace. The show marked its 10th anniversary in Las Vegas on April 1, and entertainment impresario Ross Mollison, who also produces Atomic Saloon Show at The Venetian and Opium at The Cosmopolitan, took some time to discuss Absinthe and its colorful past and exciting future.
You reopened Absinthe for the first time back in October and kept the show going with smaller audiences, then took a break. Now the show has been back since March 17 and it seems like Vegas audiences are really appreciative of the safe and fun experience you’re providing at Caesars Palace.
People have been saying things about how it’s going to be like the Roaring ’20s again and I think it actually is. We’ve all been sitting at home for a year and we want to go back to work, we want to go back on a plane, we want to go out and have fun again, and where do you go to have fun? Everyone who is coming to Las Vegas now is coming for a fun time and celebrating the fact that you’ve got these parts of your old life back, and we hope there’s no better place to do that than with us.
The earliest days of Absinthe were in New York City. What was that original experience like?
The company was built around the notion of multiple experiences that occurred in or around a spiegeltent. If you look at those early pictures from when we put it up on Pier 17 under the Brooklyn Bridge, there was a beer garden where you could sit and have a drink in this beautiful location, there were multiple artists and musicians through the day and night, we had a nightclub that would go on later with a restaurant next to it and a speakeasy cocktail bar hidden in a shipping container, and Absinthe was sort of the anchor production of all of it.
Absinthe is known for constantly adding new and exciting acts to the mix. What is the creative process behind finding those acts and making those changes?
The fun bit is discovering new talent and … then when these artists get to Vegas, you figure out how to take this exciting thing they do and make it Vegas appropriate. It’s akin to a chef putting together a seasonal menu; you want to constantly surprise and delight your customers, but at the same time you don’t want to take things off the menu that everybody comes for.
The show has changed here and there, but I’m sure your feelings about it and being in Las Vegas have changed even more.
You have an idea of what Vegas is and then when you actually get in and become part of this community, it’s just such a wonderful town and such a small place with great people. It’s such a small place for us, but when you come as a guest, it’s this big, incredible thing, and it’s been an absolute privilege for us to survive for 10 years. You look back at the big ones, (shows) like Folies Bergère and Jubilee! and you wonder, “Is that our trajectory?” We didn’t feel like it was, but now, to be talking about a 10th anniversary is incredible and doubly sweet because of the issues we had to deal with this last year.
Your company is set to reopen Atomic Saloon Show at The Venetian on May 5 and you’re also working to reopen Opium at The Cosmopolitan, developing an adjacent restaurant with entertainment there as well. What can you say about that project?
When we first launched (the previous restaurant in that space) Rose. Rabbit. Lie. and the Vegas Nocturne show at The Cosmopolitan, they were clearly ahead of their time. It was a very difficult set of circumstances we were in, but it was also the most exciting thing I think we’ve built, very ambitious and fantastic. To have the chance to come back and reimagine how to do it and make it a more exciting experience, now with six or seven years under the belt of learning how to do that, it’s going to be really fun. And we are enormous fans of what they have achieved at Cosmopolitan.
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