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plot and specifications
Welcome to the Vera of Las Vegas Website. This site is a resource for fans of
the "nightmare cabaret opera in one act" by composer Daron Hagen and librettist Paul Muldoon
as well as for Vera's extended family of present and past casts and production teams.


There is a marvelous "audio portrait" with a generous selection of audio clips from Vera that you can listen to at ascap.com.


SCENE 1
Taco is in an interrogation center, somewhere near Northern Ireland. He is slumped back on a chair, hands cuffed. Trench and Trilby take turns slapping his face, as if to bring him round. We hear the judder of his blood as the slapping continues. This judder cross-fades into the sound of a landing airplane as Taco slips into unconsciousness. We hear the susurrus of a handful of Women. The Las Vegas Airport is revealed. Flight Attendants swank by. Taco and Dumdum shuffle on, pushing a cart piled high with luggage. They are between planes. Doll, undercover as a stewardess, enters. Doll calls Taco on a courtesy phone, and tells him that he and his friend have won a free day in Las Vegas. Taco and Dumdum decide to stay. Doll tells them to meet Vera, "your Girl Friday, or more,” at the Forum Shops. Flight Attendants sing "The Suckers' Lament."

SCENE 2
The Forum Shops. Taco and Dumdum meet Vera. Doll reappears and sings about her past. Two shady characters named Trench and Trilby, clad in trench coats and trilbys flit about in the shadows. The quartet decides to go to a casino called the Hippolyta.

SCENE 3
The Hippolyta. The Dealers sing about their customers as they work. Vera wins big at the slots. Doll and Vera sing a duet during which we learn that Trench and Trilby, who are still lurking about, have been sent by one of Vera's assignations, a corrupt judge who she is suing for aggravated assault, to set her up for a crime she didn't commit. The quartet tries to lose Trench and Trilby by slipping away to a stripper bar called the Delphine.

SCENE 4
The Delphine, a bar off the strip, where strippers sing of their lot as Doll and Dumdum settle in to have a drink. Taco and Vera disappear into the shadows. Taco re-emerges, clearly rattled: he's discovered that Vera is a transvestite. "You wouldn't have missed it," replies Dumdum, "if you'd seen The Crying Game." Vera and Doll reveal that they know that Taco and Dumdum are IRA volunteers hiding out in the US without green cards. Vera announces that she knows a way to solve all their problems: She'll tear her business card, which reads "Vera Loman, LAPDANCER" so that it reads, "Vera Loman, LAPD," and run Trench and Trilby off by presenting it to them. Then, she explains, if they all get married, Taco and Dumdum will get their green cards. They set off for a drive-through wedding chapel.

SCENE 5
A drive-through wedding chapel. Trench and Trilby lurk. A canned chorus sings something vaguely hymn-like. Vera sings a heart-wrenching aria about her past before presenting Trench and Trilby with the business card. They flee. Taco, at the last moment, backs out of marrying Vera. The lights change. Taco staggers backwards into a chair. He slumps. The others depart. He confesses to a grisly murder. Vera wails into the night, "Where's my Taco Bell?" from offstage as Taco's head lolls to the side.

TACO (Tenor)
A forty-five year old man, originally from Northern Ireland. He's now an illegal resident of the Bronx, New York, where he drives a cab.
DUMDUM (Baritone)
His lifelong friend, also forty-five and living illegally in the Bronx, where he tends bar.
DOLL (Soprano)
A forty-five year old woman, formerly a blackjack dealer, now an undercover agent for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
VERA (Male Soprano)
An African-American, transvestite lap dancer residing in Las Vegas.
TRENCH and TRILBY (Mute)
Shady characters.
THE CATCHALLS
Six to twelve very young women who portray at various times Flight Attendants, Pequods, Romans, Casino Girls, Dealers, Strippers, Lap-Dancers, and a pre-recorded Wedding Chapel Choir.

(16 Players)
Reed I: oboe, english horn*
Reed II: clarinet, soprano sax, bass clarinet*
Reed III: clarinet, alto sax, bass clarinet*
Reed IV: bassoon
Trumpet in C
Trombone
Keyboard I: piano, tambourine
Keyboard II: synthesizer
Keyboard III: synthesizer
Guitar (doubling electric, acoustic rhythm,
    & electric lead guitar)
Percussion
2 Violins*
Viola*
Violoncello*
Contrabass*
Conductor-triggered CD player containing
    pre-recorded sound-effects cues.

*The string quartet may be enlarged discreetly if desired, or amplified electrically if necessay. In case of enlargement, two string basses are maximum. In addition, the reed books may be divided among several players to eliminate the need for doubling.

An alternate orchestration for piano, reed player, bass and percussion is also available


The authors envision the work staged in a cabaret or nightclub setting, with at least some of the audience seated at small cocktail tables.

The orchestra should be clad in formal evening wear and be seated onstage in typical big band formation, behind dance band-style music stands, with the drummer on a raised platform in the middle.

The conductor acts like a bandleader and is dressed accordingly. The action of the opera takes place throughout the performing space - onstage, on the raised platform in the middle, at tables in the audience, on a runway, if there is one.


Unlicensed productions are expressly forbidden.

The Vera of Las Vegas cast CD is available commerically in stores. The opera is published by Carl Fischer. Rental materials are available on hire from the publisher. Click here for contact information.

Vera of Las Vegas is performed without supertitles.

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