The Spice Girls took the world by storm after the release of “Wannabe” in June 1996, kicking male-dominated Britpop bands to the curb in the U.K. and peppering pop charts with girl power anthems and five-part harmonies. They’ve had two reunion tours since, playing three dates in Las Vegas during the first. They seem ripe for a residency, but visitors to Vegas don’t have to wait to spice up their lives, thanks to tribute show Spice Wannabe—The Spice Girls Tribute, which returns to Excalibur for its third engagement after a tour that concluded with a date at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort in North Carolina.
“It was amazing,” said creator/co-producer Casey McConachie, who plays Emma “Baby Spice” Bunton in the show, in a post-tour phone interview. “It was such a good show. It was probably our biggest crowd that we’ve had so far.”
McConachie left little to chance when she first brought Spice Wannabe to Excalibur in July. The show debuted at South Point last year and sold out at the Silverton in February. The cast experimented with an adults-only theme, then went on tour before launching the current family-friendly version during the summer. “The hype around it was already building and growing,” said McConachie. “July was amazing. First night, second, every show … it was so much energy, so many people coming out to see it because it was a limited engagement. We didn’t know if we were going to stay past July, so people were coming and dressing up.”
McConachie was in middle school when the Spice Girls went into heavy rotation on MTV. She and her friends assumed Spice Girls personas, with McConachie as the Baby Spice of the group, of course. She went into entertainment, becoming a Britney Spears impersonator and starting her own business, FantaSea Productions, that booked mermaid-costumed performers for events.
The insider experiences of performing in tribute shows and casting talent placed her in position to expand on an idea written down in a notebook into a concept during the doldrum days of the pandemic. “It’s been years in the making,” said McConachie. “Just doing a one-act with Britney, it’s a lot. Hiring out the dancers, costumes, setlists, everything. … The biggest challenge was finding the right talent to cast.”
She needed Wannabes who looked like Spice Girls, could sing and could dance. McConachie found them. “The little kids are watching us, not understanding we’re a tribute show,” she said. “They think that we are the group. It’s really cute to see how they’re screaming at the top of their lungs.”
Adults scream as well, with some coming as their favorite group member or character from the Spice World movie. “That’s why we named it Spice Wannabe,” said McConachie. “We make it a point in the show to ask who came. We point the people out who dressed up, like ‘Which Spice Girl did you want to be growing up? Where are the Sporties? Where are the Gingers?’ They stand up and cheer.”
