A decade of ‘Thunder’ claps

By Jerry Fink

Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009 | 2 a.m.

By day Franny Kring is a planning analyst for the City of Henderson, but by night the 71-year-old grandmother looks for a little thunder and lightning in her life.

Especially “thunder.”

In the past 10 years, Kring has attended more than 400 performances of “Thunder From Down Under,” usually sitting down front where she can get a good look at the ripped bodies of the male strippers from Australia who titillate hundreds of adoring female fans nightly at the Excalibur.

“I clap and I sing out loud, which probably irritates people around me, but the dancers want to get the audience involved,” says Kring, who’s spent more than $10,000 on tickets to “Thunder.”

“It’s fun, it’s just fun. I like the music and the guys are great. I just go to have a good time, at least once a month, sometimes twice. It depends on if I have friends from out of town. I’ll go on a Friday night and stay for two shows.”

She knows the names and birth dates of all the cast members, who recently showed their appreciation by presenting her with a cake on the night she attended her 400th show.

Kring saw her first performance 10 years ago at the Stardust, where the group first played in Vegas, doing two-week engagements once a year. She was newly divorced and a friend took her.

“The next year a bunch of us girls from the office had a girls’ night out,” she says. “Twelve of us went to the show and I went back every time they were in town at the Stardust for the next three years.”

When “Thunder” landed a permanent gig at the Excalibur in 2002, no one was more excited than Kring.

“I was in line two hours early so I could get a seat down front,” she says.

Kring is set to retire on March 5, which should give her more time for “Thunder,” especially because show producer Adam Steck is giving her a lifetime pass to the show.

Kring was born in Nebraska and moved to Arizona in 1963, where she worked for a beer distributor and raised a son and two daughters before moving to Las Vegas in 1990.

She says in addition to seeing more “Thunder” when she retires, she will also be able to devote more time to her second favorite activity — attending drag races.

“When the kids were little in Mesa, it had a drag strip and we used to go out there a lot,” Kring says. “When they built the track here in Las Vegas, my son started coming up and we’ll spend three days out at the drag races.

“I love it. It’s so much fun.”