The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas presents Spiegelworld's 'Opium'

A creation of Spiegelworld, the company behind the highly successful Vegas show Absinthe (at Caesars Palace), Opium is staged in the same space as Spiegelworld’s short-lived Vegas Nocturne. It’s also built around the same elements that have worked well for Absinthe. Like Absinthe, Opium comprises a series of variety acts interspersed with bits by recurring characters. However, Opium uses more of a narrative structure.

“More” is relative, since Opium’s storyline (about the crew of the starship OPM 4.2, en route “from Uranus to Las Vegas”) makes little sense, and is mostly just an excuse for raunchy jokes and musical numbers of varying quality. Many of those musical numbers come courtesy of Dusty Moonboots, played by Pig Iron Theatre Company co-founder and Martha Graham Cracker alter ego Dito van Reigersberg, who’s introduced as “the Celine Dion of Uranus.”

Van Reigersberg gets the chance to belt out space-themed numbers (and Graham Cracker favorites) such as David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” and Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” Although all the show’s performances are deliberately kitschy, Van Reigersberg is a strong enough singer to make Dusty’s songs close to enjoyable on a nonironic level.

Feet on the ground, heads in the stars

It’s tougher to slog through the belabored sketch-style comedy in between the variety acts, as new OPM cadet Chip learns the ropes on the ship courtesy of a robot named Rob. There are a lot of repetitive double entendres (prepare for numerous references to, you guessed it, Uranus), but despite a few topless moments from the ship’s “activities director” Leslie and “medical officer” Nurse Raquel, the naughtiness is pretty tame, mostly in the realm of tittering schoolyard jokes. Opium may be for adults only, but it’s decidedly immature, which is ultimately more tiresome than amusing.

Among the variety acts, the best of the current crop is a sword swallower named Todd, whose actual talents don’t offer anything new (yep, he swallows some swords), but whose self-deprecating patter and sharp audience interaction put him a cut above the show’s heavily scripted and self-consciously campy sketch-comedy material. Other acts include a burlesque dancer inside a balloon (an act very similar to a fan favorite from Absinthe); a pudgy, unitard-wearing hula-hoop spinner; a muscular acrobat accompanied by a little dog; and some mediocre magic from the aforementioned Nurse Raquel and her partner, Doctor Roger Regis.

Possibly most notable, though, is a viscerally revolting act that involves two performers spitting bits of banana between each other’s mouths, and then feeding the chewed-up mush to one another like a mother bird feeding her babies. It’s nearly impossible to watch without gagging.

That brazen gross-out is in keeping with the show’s aspiring-cult-classic aesthetic, which borrows thematically from John Waters movies and visually from garish midnight movies such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Apple, and Barbarella. The set design is intentionally flimsy-looking, like a high-school drama club’s version of a spaceship. But the sparkly, colorful outfits by renowned costume designer Machine Dazzle — who designed the costumes for Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music — have a more effective balance of trash and artistry, especially in the elaborate dresses worn by van Reigersberg’s Dusty Moonboots (which sometimes drape suggestively over audience members).

The show as a whole aims for the same mix of lowbrow style and artistic vision, but it only occasionally hits the mark.