Lopez raises ante in Vegas
She sizzles in a show that blends arena spectacle, Hollywood glitz and more.
LAS VEGAS — “Vegas, there’s a new girl in town,” Jennifer Lopez announced during a sold-out show at Planet Hollywood’s Axis Theater on Friday.
Judging from the dazzling two-hour spectacle the multi-hyphenate entertainer has produced for her debut Vegas residency, Lopez’s proclamation felt more like a warning to the other pop divas that have mounted high-profile shows on the Strip.
The show is called “All I Have” — named after her smash duet with LL Cool J — and Lopez delivered that, and more, in a production so awe-inspiring it’s clear she is making a play for “it girl” status in a city that boasts marquee acts from superstars Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and Britney Spears, with
whom she shares a venue.
Directed by the husbandand-wife team of Napoleon and Tabitha D’umo, a.k.a. NappyTabs, the production aims, and greatly succeeds, at setting a new gold standard for Vegas pop-star showcases.
With enough razzle, dazzle and pizazz to light up the entire Strip — the 335,000 Swarovski crystals that make up her many Versace and designer costumes and set pieces also help — Lopez eclipsed her competitors with the tech-savvy show that features lasers, pyro, stunning costumes and breathtaking dancing.
An ethereal, fairy-tale overture opened the show as a quartet of female dancers in showgirl regalia (marvelous feathered headpieces and wings) were suspended above the stage.
Clad in a sparkly bodysuit adorned with a crystalencrusted bra and bikini bottom and a white feathered robe, Lopez launched into her debut single, “If You Had My Love,” her first charttopper.
For the next two hours, the singer-actress better known as J. Lo sizzled in the nearly $10-million production that merged Hollywood glitz and glamour, classic Vegas revue, Broadway pomp and arena spectacle with the showmanship, sex appeal and genre hopping that’s made the Bronx-born Puerto Rican a superstar.
“I was born to do this,” Lopez said at the top of the show in the recorded intro.
Saccharine, yes, but she worked tirelessly to convince and made the work look effortless.
When she wasn’t slinking up and down a mirrored staircase adorned with jewels, she was being presented with sequined red roses by a gaggle of muscular male dancers riding blue-lacquered hoverboards for “Love Don’t Cost A Thing,” twirling around the “O” of her nickname that was built into the stage as a catwalk in a custom-designed floorlength fur coat to Sheila E.’s “The Glamorous Life,” going full-on Bob Fosse with a jazzy soft-shoe routine while covering “Bye Bye Birdie” standard “A Lot of Livin’ to Do” and timing her hip shakes to blasts of pyro.
It was part “Jubilee,” part “Material Girl,” part “Jenny From the Block” — and that was only the opening salvo of songs.
Ja Rule popped up for the first of two guest appearances of the night, rapping his verse to the better-known, grittier remix of “I’m Real.” Later Lopez was joined by Latin pop sensation Prince Royce to cover Debra Laws’ “Very Special” and “All I Have,” which sampled it.
Twenty-five years after she got her break as a Fly Girl on “In Living Color,” Lopez’s dancing is undoubtedly the centerpiece of the show.
While she deserves a great deal of credit for singing live for the entirety of Friday’s show — especially impressive given how much she really moves — watching her throw her body into every routine with a vigor and intensity that never ceased is what made the show a marvel. At one point she even runs and throws herself on the floor to glide on her knees, timing her dive to land at the very edge of the stage.
After joking that she had gotten too “thuggish” during her hip-hop segment — she was, after all, wearing hightop sneakers, bodysuit, Yankees hat and holding a wooden stickball bat — she went into full Vegas showgirl, something a total package of a performer can easily ace.
Amid a background of glowing female legs (some real, some not) sexily crossed inside neon-lighted picture frames, a velvet-gowned Lopez took her time teasing the audience with a slow, sultry burlesque striptease in which she flipped and straddled a large chaise longue, ripping off her turquoise gown to reveal a crystal-adorned corset and matching garters as her bouncy, DJ Mustard-produced B-side “Girls” blasted over the speakers. The corset came off too, revealing matching bra and panties.
“I know what you want, some booty,” Lopez joked, coyly referencing her famous curves.
Lopez redressed one of her biggest dance-pop hits, “Waiting for Tonight,” as a house stomper equipped with fierce voguing before ending the night atop a silvery moon as glitter showered the audience during “On the Floor.”
She has two prime-time shows on the air putting her on TV screens for roughly five hours a week, her own fragrances, countless endorsement deals, a TV and film production company, part ownership in a cable network and an unbridled omnipresence in pop culture, and so Lopez’s Vegas show felt more like a victory lap for a consummate performer who is more famous than any one of their works — a very sparkly victory lap that just made her the queen of the Strip.