A CELEBRATION OF LIFE

from Sunseeker - Spring 2022 - West Coast Edition

by nonstoplife

CHIHULY IN THE DESERT

A CELEBRATION OF LIFE Donny Osmond returns to the Las Vegas stage with an all-new residency

By Heather Turk

After 11 years of performing alongside his sister Marie at Flamingo Las Vegas, Donny Osmond launched his firstever solo residency at Harrah’s Las Vegas last August. A musical journey that takes fans through the entertainer’s illustrious career, Osmond joked that the intimate production took 60 years to put together. “The concept of the show is completely different than the silliness and the comedy that people expected with Donny & Marie,” Osmond told Sunseeker. “This show gives me the opportunity to showcase everything that I’ve done musically and otherwise: the highs and the lows. It’s not just a show where there’s eye candy; there’s some heart and soul to it.”

Osmond spent “countless hours” figuring out the show’s set list, which features everything from his signature single, “Puppy Love,” to a show-stopping performance of “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Disney’s “Mulan.” While naturally Osmond can’t sing every song he’s ever performed during the production, the set list does change nightly thanks to a request segment Osmond does with his fans. As images of all 65 albums he’s recorded are shown on the video screen behind him, Osmond asks select audience members to pick their favorite album. He then asks them to choose any song from that album and performs 15 to 20 seconds of it — at least to the best of his memory.

Donny Osmond’s new residency was choreographed by Emmy Award-winning duo Nappytabs (“So You Think You Can Dance”)

Osmond admitted that “Puppy Love” is actually one of his favorite numbers to perform

Osmond noted that it was “worth all the blood, sweat and tears” it took to create the show during the COVID-19 pandemic to “take people away from the world of trouble that we’re going through for 90 minutes”

“There have been several times where I couldn’t remember part of a song,” Osmond admitted. “I would just say, ‘I don’t know the rest of this song. Let’s just listen to it,’ and everybody would start laughing.”

Osmond also does his best to cover his career in an “auto-rap-ography.” As Osmond performs the impressive rap, which took five months to write and three months to learn, archived photos and videos that “would have never seen the light of day” otherwise are shown on the showroom’s screens to accompany the lyrics.

“Originally, the rap was called ‘Six in Six: Six Decades in Six Minutes,’” Osmond recalled. “But as Keith (Harrison, Osmond’s music director) started writing the thing and I started flooding him with material, he said, ‘There’s no way to fit this into six minutes.’ So, it turned into a 10-minute song.” If there’s one thing that even the biggest Donny Osmond fan will leave the show being surprised by, it’s just how much the versatile performer has accomplished.

“Every night I hear, ‘I just can’t believe how much you’ve done in your life,’” Osmond stated. “The other night, during the personal preshow I do, this one lady asked, ‘Why do you keep doing this?’ The simple answer is I love what I do. If you lived in my shoes — particularly for those 90 minutes onstage and you looked at how much fun the audience is having reliving my entire life that they’ve been a part of — then you’d understand why I keep working so hard. It’s euphoric for me and it’s fun for the audience, and isn’t that what entertainment is all about?” harrahslasvegas.com