The Kats Report Bureau at this writing is Banana Leaf Cafe at the Riviera, where a little lounge has been arranged in an incidental sort of way. There are leather couches and square hassocks set about at the front of the restaurant. My blue suedes are resting happily on one of those footstools right now.
“Playing out the string” is the phrase that pays around here, as it’s a little more than a month before the hotel is to be closed on May 4 and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority takes over to build its new convention center. It’s a time for quiet reflection, made easy as this place is about empty aside from a few employees, and one of my favorite memories of the Riv is the night Barry Williams performed his one-man, multimedia show over at Le Bistro Theater.
The crowd was sparse but the energy high as Williams donned such 1970s effects as bell-bottom slacks and a frilly, Indian-styled vest. I was called onstage that night to dance in a hastily organized production number from Williams’ days on “The Brady Bunch.” I think it was the “Sunshine Day” number. But whatever, I remember that my dear friend and former Sun education reporter Emily Richmond was onstage that night, too, and the next day I received a call from then-Riv PR director John Neeland asking if the rumors were true — that Emily and I actually appeared onstage at the Riviera with Barry Williams.
Yes. True. That was in May 2006, folks. It was a sunshine day, or night, and one of many at this famed Strip resort.
Onward:
• Posting maybe as you read this is an update from Penn Jillette from an interview conducted after Monday night’s Penn & Teller show at the Rio. The show was sold out, which is not news for the swift-selling production but impressive nonetheless. Jillette did provide some detail about a new attraction the duo is planning that is a complement to the new Vanishing African Spotted Pygmy Elephant Act (this not an elephant, but a cow named Elsie, which disappears). The duo spent about six years and half a million USD on this act — and it is not finished.
To be constructed into the Penn & Teller Theater is the Secret Pasture of Penn & Teller, a none-too-oblique take on the Secret Garden of Siegfried & Roy. In the theater lobby, a ticket booth and doorway will be built into the wall, and recordings of mooing and elephants trumpeting will be heard. Pictures and drawings of elephants and maps leading to their location will be hung at the entrance, similar to what you see at Disney World.
The topper: A larger-than-life sculpture of the duo with the “elephant” also is being developed, which is being created out of wood by an artist using a chainsaw. There is no access to any pasture, of course, but as Jillette says, “You don’t have to get the Secret Garden joke. Just the idea that the word ‘pasture’ has been elevated to that level is enough for me.”
• One more from the suddenly overflowing P&T file: Teller’s wonderful play, “The Tempest,” which premiered last spring in a tent at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts’ Symphony Park, plays next at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Opening night is Sept. 17. Broadway remains the golden ring for this show, a project of passion for the silent partner of the comedy team at the Rio.
• Frankie Moreno’s premiere of his 12-show spree at Cabaret Jazz, titled “Under the Influence,” rocked the house. The show was a tribute to Ray Charles, and Moreno and his band were joined by Skye Dee Miles for “Georgia.” Highlights, and there were many, included “Unchain My Heart” and “What’d I Say?” Lacey Schwimmer sang a Moreno original, too, in a quick-tempo show that sold 203 tickets in a 244-seat room. A good start for a Tuesday night premiere with “Newsies” opening next door at Reynolds Hall.
The ambitious “Under the Influence” format calls for Moreno to pay homage to a different artist (or, genre, in the case of “The Crooners”) each week. So we’ll have an Elvis night, a Beatles night, like that. But there will be no advance announcement of which tribute will be performed. You’ll know once the first song is rolled out, or even before then if you know someone (wink). Tickets to these weekly festivals are $20-$25 and available at TheSmithCenter.com.
• Sin City Theater operator John Padon says everything is groovy at his venue at Planet Hollywood, where Murray Sawchuck and Sin City Comedy keep the motor running. Good, we say. Padon says to look forward to an announcement in the next couple of days related to a booking at the club. We will look forward to that. Suffice to say there is never a dull moment at that tucked-away enclave.
• With “Defending the Caveman” finding a home at The D Las Vegas, expect more movement in that Fremont Street hotel-casino’s cozy showroom. Headliner Frankie Scinta’s contract with the hotel ends in May, and he’s scouting the scene looking for an ideal deal. The Scintas’ history in Las Vegas dates more than 15 years now, to when they opened at the Las Vegas Hilton’s Shimmer Cabaret. The show’s run at The D, where it opened two years ago almost to the day, seems all but timed out.
• Jeff Leibow reminds us of a crucial deadline to contact elected officials to help raise funding for neurofibromatosis research. He is pushing for supporters to fill out an extraordinarily simple form at NFAdvocacy.org, which will encourage members of the Senate and House of Representatives to sign a “Dear Colleague” letter requesting additional funding for NF research through the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs. Deadline to fill out this form is 2 p.m. Friday, so get on it.
More than 100,000 people nationwide suffer from NF, including the daughter of Jeff and Melody Leibow, Emma. NF is a genetic disorder that attacks the central nervous system and disables the body’s tumor suppressor gene. Without warning, tumors can surface and grow on any nerve in the body. A former cast member of “Jersey Boys” at Paris Las Vegas, Leibow is now the director of the NF Hope foundation and is the leader in fundraising to fight the disease across the country. The next NF Hope Concert is set for 1 p.m. Oct. 18 at Sands Showroom in the Venetian.
• A last word on the Riv. The final co-headliners on the final night of operations for the Riviera Comedy Club, which is May 3, are Michael “Wheels” Parise and Shayma Tash. Expect these two to let it fly that night in what will certainly be a “no-consequence” experience. Tash in particular promises to uncork material never performed for a live audience, calling such a performance on the final night of a nightclub “a comic’s dream.”
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.
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