Now Appearing: Carole’s last stand

Friday, Dec. 9, 2005 | 7:31 a.m.

What: Carole Montgomery in "Confessions of a PT&A Mom" When: 8 p.m. today

Where: BackStage Theatre, Community College of Southern Nevada's Chey' ne campus

Rating (out of five stars): ****

Tonight is your last chance to catch the autobiographical, standup comedy act of Carole Montgomery during its engagement at CCSN's BackStage Theatre.

"Confessions of a PT&A Mom" begins at 8 p.m. at the Cheyenne campus.

At $8 dollars, the show is a bargain.

The bare bones, 100-seat theater is small and intimate, perfect for this kind of soul-baring performance by one of Las Vegas' premier comics.

You won't see Montgomery at her bawdiest during this one-hour production, which was written by her and her husband, Todd, and directed by Sue Lawless, but you will see her at her most sensitive.

Montgomery has an X-rated act that can be hilarious, or (if you are touchy about adult humor) off-putting.

She spent five years as a headliner at the Riviera's Comedy Club.

For the past couple of years she was the comic relief at the Luxor's "Fantasy" (formerly "Midnight Fantasy"). When the producer of that show decided to go in a different direction Montgomery picked up where she left off, appearing in comedy clubs in Las Vegas and around the country.

Before a three-week run at the Community College of Southern Nevada, she performed "Confessions of a PT&A Mom" at the New York Underground Comedy Festival at the Medicine Show Theatre.

Her autobiographical routine won't have your sides aching from laughing, or blushing from some of the language, but there is plenty of humor and pathos to make the show worth your time.

"PT&A Mom" is a play on letters -- she has performed in T&A shows; and she is in fact a member of the PTA at her 13-year-old son's school.

And she helps out his Little League team.

The incongruity between her stand-up act and her domestic routine is striking, but "Confessions" gives us some insight into her personality and to how she became who she is.

She walks us through her life just as her Jewish grandparents walked across Russia to escape Communism and ended up in America.

No area seems too sensitive to expose to the light -- whether telling fans about when she first began menstruating (at the age of 12) her mother slapped her.

Or exposing one of her great humiliations -- being physically abused by a boyfriend, and accepting the abuse.

"I broke up with him because he cheated on me, not because he beat me," Montgomery said.

She talked about losing her virginity, about oral sex, about the birth of her comedy career in the 1980s.

"I worked hundreds of clubs all over the country," she said. "Eventually we moved to Los Angeles, and the only difference I found between New York and L.A. was that the comics were thinner and tanner."

Montgomery, who is 45, says in the early '90s her biological clock started ticking and so she and her husband decided to start a family.

"I'm not your typical suburban housewife," she said.

Jerry Fink can be reached at 259-4058 or at jerry@lasvegassun.com.