Gordie Brown: A show stuck in time

By Joe Brown

Monday, June 15, 2009 | 2 a.m.

There are thousands of hardworking showbiz people in Las Vegas. But the hardest jobs may belong to the five musicians who have to stand behind impressionist Gordie Brown and act as if they think his shtick is funny or even amusing. Night after night.

Imagine a world in which YouTube, “The Soup,” “The Daily Show,” even “Saturday Night Live” never existed.

That’s Gordie Brown’s world, a place where pop culture pressed “pause” at about the time of “Achy Breaky Heart,” Hootie & the Blowfish and “Forrest Gump.”

If the mere mention of those names makes you chuckle, well, this could be the show for you.

Brown does in fact acknowledge that we have a new president (who talks ... very ... deliberately), and a former president (who was, apparently, very dumb). But for the most part he’s peddling stale nostalgia. Dick Cheney hunting jokes. Britney kissing Madonna jokes. “Fantasy Island’s” Tattoo jokes.

Vanilla Ice jokes, for crying out loud.

The bulk of Brown’s act consists of singing impressions, tweaking lyrics, playground style, in the voice of the artist he’s attempting to evoke.

He nods to Strip contemporaries Tom Jones and Santana (turning “Smooth” into a limerick about plastic surgery). And he makes a momentary and contemptuous attempt at acknowledging the existence of contemporary music, aping not-so-fresh hits by Eminem, Usher and Green Day.

Some of Brown’s physical impressions come fairly close, and he’s at his best conjuring fellow comedians or actors. His Joan Rivers, Ray Romano, Robin Williams, Nicolas Cage, Robert DeNiro and Jack Nicholson were all right on — but he gives them nothing really funny to say.

Here’s a good place to note that plenty of people sitting around me were in hysterics, nearly aspirating in glee. And the crowd rewarded Brown with the obligatory standing ovation.

The comic shows some flashes of spontaneity — he ad-libs quite a bit, and the cleverest moments came when he meandered the aisles, fitting the lyrics to a “Phantom of the Opera” tune according to the occupations of audience members.

But most of it is Stripshtick by the numbers, a weak, lower-priced version of what Danny Gans was doing. Brown clicks through all the usual suspects: The Rat Pack, check. Louis Armstrong, got it, and of course Michael Jackson, yup. Elvis, natch, doing — you guessed it — “Suspicious Minds” and “My Way.”

The ads for Brown’s show make a big deal of the fact that Celine Dion chose him to be the opening act for a portion of her world tour. One can only surmise that she gave him the nod out of loyalty to a fellow Canadian (Brown is from Montreal).

A quick and kinetic performer, Brown is obviously intelligent. And he’s certainly aware that his current act is a museum piece.

“Quick, get out your iPhone,” he joked to an apparently puzzled-looking young woman in the audience. “I’m giving you time to Google ‘Dean Martin.’ ”

But Brown has clearly made a calculated choice to play in the shallow end. He could be much better than this.