Siegfried & Roy Musical Staged by Ex-Attorney Who Sued Roy and Lost
Posted on: June 30, 2026, 07:44h.
Last updated on: June 29, 2026, 09:05h.
- Former attorney Mike Meier has transformed his failed 2013 sexual harassment lawsuit against Roy Horn (of Siegfried &) into a satirical musical comedy
- Shangri-La-La serves as a “revenge musical” detailing Meier’s allegations of Las Vegas judicial bias while exploring themes of celebrity power, immigrant ambition, and showbiz delusion
- An abbreviated version of the show is scheduled to tour multiple theater festivals this summer and fall
He lost in a Las Vegas courtroom, but former attorney Mike Meier is taking his case against Siegfried & Roy’s Roy Horn — and the Las Vegas justice system — to the stage. In 2013, Meier sued Horn and very much lost. But living that legal drama gave him the raw material for one of the most bizarre left turns in theatrical (and legal) history: a musical comedy he’s written and directed called Shangri-La-La.
Lawsuit: the Musical
Meier represented Oliver Preiss, Roy Horn’s former personal assistant, in 2013’s Preiss v. Horn. Preiss alleged that he was fired after rebuffing Horn’s sexual advances. Several other former employees also became involved in the litigation.
Preiss claimed there was video evidence supporting his allegations. The footage was captured by surveillance cameras that Horn had allegedly ordered Preiss to install because cash hidden around Horn’s Las Vegas mansion was being stolen.
“The videos did capture the thief, one of the caretakers, but more importantly, they showed what we believed was sexual misconduct involving the caretakers — groping, grabbing, demands for sexual favors, things like that,” Meier told Casino.org. “A fellow attorney told me at the time, ‘Mike, a trained monkey could win this case.’ That’s what I thought, too, but not for long.”
Meier says he came to believe the system was biased to protect Las Vegas’ brightest stars. For instance, the judge presiding over the state court proceedings — which addressed the alleged torts of assault, battery, and negligent infliction of emotional distress — collected the video evidence and, according to Meier, turned it over to Horn.
“It was a little curious why the judge should collect the evidence and then turn it over to the defendants,” he told us, indicating that he didn’t think to make his own copies.
That judge was Carolyn Ellsworth of the Eighth Judicial District Court, who had previously served as chief in-house litigation counsel for Mirage Resorts and had appeared in at least one prior matter connected to Siegfried & Roy: Taube v. Mirage Casino-Hotel.
“I didn’t know that at the time,” Meier said. “I had to laugh at everything — most of all, myself. What a babe in the woods. I had no idea what I was getting into.”
In a related case in federal court, U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt imposed $37,415 in attorneys’ fees against Meier and his co-counsel under 28 U.S.C. § 1927, which permits sanctions when attorneys are found to have unreasonably and vexatiously multiplied proceedings. The judge also referenced contact with the National Enquirer after a $500,000 settlement demand was rejected.
In late 2016, Meier’s law license was suspended for 30 days in Virginia, and New York disciplinary authorities issued a public censure.
‘Hometown Justice’
Complaints about “hometown justice” in Las Vegas are nothing new. A snapshot of the system’s alleged improprieties was famously presented in a three-part 2006 L.A. Times investigation by reporter William Rempel titled “In Las Vegas, They’re Playing with a Stacked Judicial Deck.”
But none of those complaints had ever been set to music — until now.
“I’ve been playing music all my life,” Meier said. “I’m largely self-taught because my mother didn’t have money to pay for music lessons. But I’ve always performed. I played in rock bands when I was young, and to this day I still play flamenco and Latin guitar music in Spanish restaurants.”
For Meier, Shangri-La-La became an act of defiance, a comic exorcism, and a way of transforming a legal defeat into something theatrical.
“I had spent years practicing law, and I thought I could trust the legal system,” Meier said. “So it was time to reconsider. I started piano lessons, and that’s what ultimately led to this musical. I composed the music on the piano.”
Shangri-La-La follows Joshua, a wide-eyed German idealist who arrives in Las Vegas expecting sequins and the good life, only to end up assisting two retired illusionists and stumbling into a funhouse maze of showbiz delusion, power games, and judicial sleight of hand.
And in the most deliciously meta twist, Meier plays Joshua’s lawyer in the full-length version of the show — meaning he gets to finally win the case.
“One of the singers for the studio recording said, ‘Mike, you invented a new genre — the revenge musical,’ so maybe that’s what it is,” Meier said. “But the lawsuit is really just the doorway into something bigger: Vegas, immigrant ambition, magic, celebrity, tigers, reinvention, and the American dream going slightly off the rails.”
The abbreviated one-hour festival version of Shangri-La-La focuses on the rise of Siegfried & Roy. It can be seen at the following upcoming theater festivals:
Harrisburg Fringe Festival: July 19, 2026
Midtown International Theatre Festival, NYC: July 25-26, 2026
Rogue Theater Festival, Digital/Online: July 2026
Philadelphia Fringe Festival: Sept. 27, 2026
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