Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Flexibility key to ‘Showstoppers’ setlist; Frankie Moreno has scant shows left at Strat

12 Annual 'Girls Night Out' Charity Gala

Courtesy

Frankie Moreno performs during Shade Tree’s 12th Annual “Girls Night Out” Gala Wednesday, May 21, 2014.

The Kats Report Bureau at this writing is Planet Mazda on West Sahara Avenue, which evidently has supplanted Pluto among entities recognized as actual planets in our solar system. There do seem to be signs of intelligent life in here, especially the auto techs changing the oil in KatMobile III.

I was asked a bit ago if I wanted regular or synthetic, and I said, “Make it Diet Synthetic.”

No? Not happening?

Whatever, while we wait, we rake:

• Those who have seen “Steve Wynn’s Showstoppers,” and read early accounts of the lineup of numbers to be performed in the show, have noted some famous shows not represented. “Phantom of the Opera,” “Les Miserables” and “Cats,” among them. But know that Steve Wynn has earlier said that there are is a deep reserve of numbers that can be swapped into the production as it moves along its open-ended schedule at Encore Theater. Even from the early previews to today, some numbers have been shuffled in and out of the production.

Crucial to the success of the show is the talent of those onstage, and the presentation of the material. And it will be strong in that regard, no doubt. The buzz around the marketplace is the show is so teeming with real talent that any Broadway-style number could be performed to great response. The trick will be in luring an audience receptive to classic entertainment into Encore Theater to either learn about, or revisit, great musical theater. As promised, Wynn has been inviting such influencers as performers, entertainment-industry heavyweights (such as Steve Lawrence) and concierges to see early run-throughs of the show.

The big test begins Dec. 20, when “Showstoppers” starts, for real.

• Frankie Moreno is down to just a handful of shows at the Stratosphere. The interest in what’s next for everyone involved spans the entire entertainment scene. Officials from resorts on and off the Strip have been spotted in the Stratosphere Showroom ever since the hotel announced that it would cut Moreno loose after his show Dec. 20, thus ending his contract 10 months early.

The hotel is entertaining a host of suitors, and even a host of hosts, as it looks to fill the slot left open by Moreno’s departure. Magicians, musicians, tribute acts, vocal ensembles, monkeys with smoke machines — there seems no bounds for those interested in pitching a residency at the Strat.

The entertainment crew is not specifying a timeline for a new show, instead focusing on “Pin Up,” and the first order of business is to sign the show’s starlet, Claire Sinclair, to a new contract. Her current agreement ends in January, and the team at the Strat has said it’s just a matter of semantics to have her deal extended. She has previously signed for six months and, last January, for a full year.

• As for Moreno, I expect him to be playing the piano (and guitar and harmonica) and otherwise grooving on a Las Vegas stage by the spring, given his schedule of outside dates early next year. And expect Lacey Schwimmer to play a more prominent role in the new show onstage and through her choreography. Moreno also has just released the DVD recording of the show he performed in February in the showroom, which is targeted for broadcast by PBS in 2015 and has already aired in the Sacramento area during a summer pledge drive.

That DVD, produced by my dear friend Peter Berkow of the great city of Chico, Calif., is fantastic. It’s a great moment, captured expertly.

The Moreno run at the showroom ends at show No. 599, and his parents Frank and Carol have been at almost every one of them. The finale will not be the same without Frank and Carol seated in Booth B1. But I am confident that they’ll turn up for the next Moreno opening, wherever it is.

• Bob Anderson’s “Frank. The Man. The Music.” will again be driven by someone well-versed in Frank, the man and the music: Vinnie Falcone, Sinatra’s longtime music director, will be at the keys and serve as MD for the celebration of the Chairman of the Board at Palazzo Theater. That show opens Jan. 24 and runs 8 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and 9 p.m. Fridays. (Tickets are $71.50, $82.50 and $93.50. VIP packages are $176 and available at Palazzo.com or by calling (702) 414-9000.) . “Panda!,” currently occupying the room, packs up the bamboo and bugs out Dec. 28.

Coupled with the 32-piece orchestra in “Showstoppers,” the Sinatra show’s 32-piece ensemble means that there will be 64 new positions for professional players on the Strip. This is a reversal of a trend over the past several years, where tracks have been used to boost live shows. Maybe it’ll hold, as I have heard of one as-yet-unidentified, but major, Strip production that is considering going with a live band.

• Among those getting hitched at high altitude at the Linq’s High Roller on Saturday is 97.1 The Point DJ and longtime Las Vegas radio personality Ken Johnson and his fiancee, Lori Kenney, who will be married during the event marking the lucky 12.13.14 date. Ken and Lori have “the first pod to roll,” as he puts it, at 10.11 a.m. — to keep the sequential vibe of 10.11.12.13.14 in order, of course.

The official for the service will be Johnson’s colleague, friend and fellow radio Lotus/97.1 The Point personality Steph MacKenzie.

Interested parties — and if you have plans to be married, you would count as interested — can start lining up Saturday at 8 a.m. On hand, too, as an officiant is “Valley View Live” co-host Dao Vu.

• The Last Survivor Weekend is being marked at the Venetian, with 100 Holocaust survivors and their families gathering on the 75th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland. On Saturday night at 8 at the hotel’s fourth-floor Lando Ballroom, Israeli star and Broadway performer Dudu Fisher fronts a multimedia concert, with tickets priced at $25 to $100. For $250, attendees are invited to a cocktail party after-party with the artists, with proceeds directed to the Holocaust Survivors group of Southern Nevada and the Sperling Kronberg Mack Holocaust Resource Center Foundation.

The weekend-long event is open to the public, with several events and attractions, including an art exhibit themed for the Holocaust and created by Chilean artist Mauricio Arenas. Commander Eugene Lebovitz, a Holocaust survivor from Czechoslovakia who served as an undercover agent for the Haganah, organized the event. The Last Survivor Weekend event features exclusively Glatt Kosher food and daily and Shabbat prayer services. There also will be a screening of a segment of the in-progress film “The Last Survivor,” which features interviews of Holocaust survivors.

• The other night, I was heading to Red Rock Resort to, you know, satisfy my bingo fix, and I was stopped at a light on West Charleston with a familiar vanity plate. I texted, in a most illegal fashion, to the person who might have been driving.

“Are you on West Charleston?” I asked. The answer was in the affirmative. I then flashed (my high beams), and out of the driver’s side window emerged the familiar face of …

Lisa Marie Smith!

We conducted a quick interview, and Lisa Marie is excited about her new single, “I Want Your Lovin’,” released about a month ago. The single is a collaboration with the gregarious and gifted Jason Tanzer. Expect more such projects from LMS as she motors along the (Charleston) Boulevard to fame, fortune and legal left-hand turns.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.

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