Christopher Kenney will be forever remembered in the long legacy of live Vegas entertainment for portraying Edie in Cirque du Soleil’s epic cabaret Zumanity for more than a decade at New York-New York. Last fall, when the company decided the show would not be returning to the Strip, the veteran entertainer already had something new to work on. Kenney co-created Faaabulous! The Show, a new drag spectacle currently performing at Notoriety Live.
You actually launched Faaabulous before the pandemic hit Las Vegas. What was that like?
A little over a year and a half ago, we did a workshop just to get it out of our heads, to stop talking about it and just do it. We did four shows at Ron DeCar’s Event Center downtown, to see if we had something, and the response was amazing. We felt excited and proud and thought we were ready to … try to get it into a casino. But doing 10 shows a week in Zumanity (caused it) to fall to the back burner for the next few months, and then COVID came.
And you did a bit of performing in the Drive-In Drag Show last summer, but when Cirque announced the closure of Zumanity, did that kick things into gear for this new project?
Zumanity should have never, ever closed. That show was just stunning. I’ll miss the show deeply but it feels good to me to be able to move on and it feels good to be doing something. The funny thing is people coming to see me as Edie didn’t know I’m a dancer. I was a dancer my whole life until Zumanity, which was just an emcee role. So it feels good to dance again, maybe one last hurrah before I’m too old. But I’m up for it, all the high kicks and everything.
And you’re doing it every Friday night at Notoriety Live, one of the newest entertainment venues in the city at downtown’s Neonopolis complex.
We’re teaching people where it’s at and how to get there, where to park. We’re just coming out of the train station and hopefully it will be successful and we get more people in seats. We’ve had great audiences, we just need to get the word out more to tourists. Right now it’s mostly locals … and the energy is great.
You’ve got an amazing cast of drag artists and dancers. What do you think sets it apart from other drag shows?
It’s all-live vocals and there are four-part harmonies, which is really exciting. And we have some really fun and different songs, some more traditional and others more contemporary. We do a Dua Lipa song. Edie has a sort of ’60s vibe so some songs have a bit of a go-go feel.
I’m sure you’re learning a lot, playing the role of producer and promoter and all that, but how does it feel just to be back onstage in front of live audiences?
It’s really fun. I feel like my old self, my New York self, the guy who was just really excited to perform, like “What’s the next gig?” The creativity is really flowing and it feels really good, and there are just a lot of great vibes coming from the audience. It’s nice to feel that spin again. We give it to the audience and hopefully they like it and give it back to us, and it turns into this spinning magical thing…. It’s a great feeling.
{ SOURCE: Las Vegas Magazine }
