Wednesday, May 30, 2007 | 7:22 a.m.
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What: "Defending the Caveman," starring Kevin Burke
When: 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Mondays and 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays
Where: Golden Nugget
Tickets: $34.95 matinee performances; $39.95 evening performances; $54.95 VIP packages; 386-8100
It only seems fair.
Women have been celebrating their woman-ness with "Menopause the Musical" at the Las Vegas Hilton.
Now men can celebrate their man-ness with "Defending the Caveman" at the Golden Nugget.
Only "Caveman" doesn't have music.
"There's no singing or dancing," said Kevin Burke, the star of the one-man show. "That's why it's a great Broadway show for guys."
"Defending the Caveman" is a about the differences between the sexes written by stand-up comedian Rob Becker in the early 1990s. Becker starred in the show until he retired and passed the role to someone else.
"Caveman" became the longest-running solo play on Broadway and has been performed in more than 30 countries. It debuts this week at the Golden Nugget, replacing "Simply Ballroom."
Burke, who lives in Indianapolis, has starred in the touring production since 2003.
He recently discussed his life and the play that has changed it.
Q: How did you get started in show business?
When I was 7 or 8 I became interested in magic, and I showed my great-grandmother Heidi Riley some tricks I had learned. She said : "Oh, that's very good. Now let me show you something."
My grandmother was in a couple of vaudeville acts called the Verona Cycle Troupe and Nick's Roller Skating Girls. Around 1909 or so she got tired of touring. She wanted out of show business. She was in Australia at the time. While she was there she bought a spiritualist medium's con - bought it from a fraudulent medium in Australia. She bought the con and he taught her the act, the con. She came back to New York and opened a seance parlor. For eight or nine years it was a very successful seance parlor.
When she was well into her 80s, and I was 7 or 8 years old, she taught me the con so when I became a stand-up comedian I put it in my act, comedy mind-reading. My great-grandmother eventually repented her con ways so when she taught me the con she made me promise to never use it to steal money.
I came about my show business interest honestly.
How long have you been performing?
I've been in show business since I was 16. I have a card with the musicians union. I grew up in Chicago, where I was a drummer. I was everybody's second phone call they would make if they needed a replacement drummer. I was No. 2 on the list. I did that a couple of years and then I started off studying music at Indiana University , but you have to study things like composition and theory and I just wanted to play. So I switched to theater.
After school did you start performing?
I went back to Chicago in the early '80s and took classes with Second City, the improv company. I never performed with them, just took classes.
I was wandering about aimlessly when I read about an audition for a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey singing ringmaster. I thought, "Wow, that's got my name all over it." But after I finished singing at the audition they told me their clown college was holding an audition the next day. I applied and got accepted.
What kind of clown were you?
I was a tramp clown, like the classic Emmett Kelly. Did that for a year and then quit for a combination of factors. The performance opportunity is incredible, selling out Madison Square Garden, but you live in a railroad yard and your living space is about the size of a bunk - 3 1/2 feet wide, 6 feet long and 7 feet tall. That's the sum total of your existence.
But what sealed the deal, at the end of the year my dad was diagnosed with cancer. I left to spend time with him. He loved the circus, and he got to see me in it before he died. I think I joined as much to please him as to please myself.
Anyway, I did that for a year and after I left the circus I wandered around aimlessly another couple of years and ended up as a street performer in Key West, Fla.
How did you end up in Key West?
Well, I went to France and lived there for a while, basically doing a lot of nothing. My girlfriend at the time was going to law school at the University of Paris so I went there and lived with her. While I was there I started doing some street performing - juggling, fire eating and stuff. Eventually we broke up, and so I went to Key West and became a street performer.
When you get paid after a show and you're paid what the audience thinks you're worth, you learn pretty fast what they like. Either that or you don't last.
Why did you quit?
I got tired of being out in the weather.
Where did you go from there?
I took a look at everything I knew how to do. Stand-up comedy seemed to be a combination of everything, and I could make the most money without having to be famous. Comedy clubs were exploding across the country back then, in the '80s. There weren't enough comics. Anybody that had 15 minutes to half an hour of reasonably funny material started working right away.
I began in '87 or '88 and did it until three or four years ago.
What was your act like?
Observational humor, a lot of physical stuff. Comedy mentalism, from the con taught to me by my great-grandmother.
Tell us about "Defending the Caveman."
The show is about 16 years old. It was written in 1990 by stand-up comedian Robert Becker. He did some research on the way men and women communicate and the research kept taking him further and further back, all the way to the caveman, the hunter-gatherer society.
Men were hunters and in order to be a successful hunter you have to concentrate on your prey to the exclusion of everything else until it's dead - otherwise you don't eat. Thousands of years of successful hunting has left this behavior ingrained in men. That's why today a guy can lock in and focus on the TV and his wife will come into the room and start talking to him and he doesn't even hear her voice. He just hears a buzzing noise. He's not ignoring her, although it feels like it to her. He's not being mean to her . He's just locked in and focused.
That's the exact opposite of cavewomen, who were gatherers and had to notice everything in the environment at once to tell them when things were ripe. You can see that today in women who love to shop. It gives them energy, a gathering activity.
These different skill sets, Rob discovered, leads to differences in the way we communicate. It's like we're two different cultures with different customs. Women cooperate and men negotiate.
It's these broad themes that make it so popular.
How did you land the role?
About three or four years ago Becker was looking for someone to replace him on the Broadway tour of the show. Two different comedians who knew both me and Rob said I would be good in the role. About 80 actors and comics auditioned, but Rob settled on me.
Is this like a comedy routine?
No, it's not stand-up. It's a play, a story with a character who goes through changes during the course of the show. He's at a different place at the end. It's not just 90 minutes of jokes. This actually goes someplace.
It's a show that brings people together. I see couples sitting closer and closer together during the course of the show. Once a woman came up to me after the show and said she knew it was going to be funny but she didn't expect to fall in love with her husband all over again.
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