In true Colony Capital fashion, the Las Vegas Hilton continues to shed parts like a rattletrap car. Our LVA research team reports that Shimmer Cabaret fixtures Voices (“Starring the beautiful and talented Lani Misalucha“) and Sin City Bad Girls have been pink-slipped. Bad Girls, the best topless show on the Strip, runs through Sunday. Misfortune-beset Elvis Presley impersonator Trent Carlini has also been shown the door. This means that except for magician Steve Dacri, the LVH has no regular shows — just intermittent appearances by comedians Mark Curry and Andrew Dice Clay. I had the misfortune to experience the latter during his brief Riviera stint, the most egregiously phoned-in performance I’ve seen in Vegas.
Wayne Brady returns: The multifaceted entertainer has shaken up the format of his Making %@it Up at Venelazzo, dropping the song-and-dance elements as well as anything else of a scripted nature. His band has been reduced to two players, as well, and the set has been stripped down to a minimum. Audience-participation shtick is all front-loaded onto the first half of the show with the remainder given over to rapid-fire interactions between Brady and sidekick Jonathan Mangum. The piece de résistance is a set of celebrity-impersonation improvisations based on audience requests. On the night we attended, these included Creed grimacing through a ballad entitled “Goodbye, Gay Boys” and Tina Turner shaking it to “All Men Are Liars.” Vegas entertainers like to invoke the Rat Pack but Wayne Brady is one of the very, very few who could actually run with that crowd.
Watch out, Strip! “Legit” theatre is camping out on your back porch. Just ’round the corner from Trump International and Fashion Show Mall lies the Erotic Heritage Museum, which is sponsoring a series of full-length plays. First up is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which prompted this passionately ambivalent response — from Yr. Humble Blogger. Another local critic complained of insufficient nudity, although I counted one John Thomas, at least one bare bum and a pair of breasts — more “naughty bits” than you’ll encounter at almost anything other than a Strip “titty” show.
Vdara “white sale”: For 72 hours, rooms at Vdara are going for $103 a pop, good through 12/31/10. In the meantime, biblical plagues continue to afflict Las Vegas. Having done a Question of the Day on this topic, I can vouch for the “creepy-crawlies” it gives you. [Shudder!]
Congratulations to outgoing Review-Journal gaming writer Arnold Knightly. He’s literally moving down the road to edit the weekly Boulder City News.
