A gorgeous poster of Pamela Anderson is up on her site with the note: "I come alive out of this poster - in Han's magic show in Vegas - it's a great entrance!!! Can't wait to start the show! Every weekend this summer at the old Aladdin!!! Now Planet Hollywood Hotel!" I had not realized the show was only going to be on weekends. So, I called over to get details. It turns out, that there will only be four performances each weekend (Thursday in Las Vegas counts as a weekend night) of "The Beauty of Magic." One show each will be on Thursday and Friday night with two shows (7 and 10) on Saturday. I think such a limited workload is a first for a permanent Vegas headliner's show.  Most resident headliners work at least 5 days a week with two shows added on the weekend. Lance Burton at Monte Carlo is typical. He works 5 days managing a total of 7 shows during a week. Penn and Teller only do one show a night but work six nights a week. A really hot show, like cirque's Love, manages two shows a night, five nights a week for a total of 10 shows. Usually you try to do as many shows as possible, because, keep in mind, even the smaller shows require stagehands, dancers, maintenance workers, ushers and other support staff. Then there is the advertising. In short, any headliner puts in place a lot of permanent expenses that can only be offset by adding shows. Back in the day, some performers were contracted to do three shows a night. Those days are gone. But it will be interesting to see if this experiment in a weekend only headliner pays off for Planet Hollywood.

(Photo by Sarah Gerke)