French star out to end his Las Vegas anonymity

And scared he probably should be.

Goude is a ubiquitous television host and theatrical director in France. But the French contingent will only fill a limited number of seats for "Twisted Vegas," a comic variety show opening Tuesday in the big theater at the Westgate Las Vegas.

People usually call the venue "The Elvis Showroom" in honor of its most famous tenant. But that didn't help Elvis impersonator Martin Fontaine last year, or any number of standing shows — remember the steampunk magic of "Triumph"? — which attempted to fill its seats in the past few years.

But Goude has a contagious enthusiasm. And, apparently, some mad skills on the dance floor.

He explains one of the show's two dozen comic variety numbers and then goes onstage to perform it as a rehearsal/demonstration. It spoofs Las Vegas' nightclub scene, and Goude will be the drunk guy "hitting on a girl, attempting to seduce her by showing her my French dancing skills."

"Let me get drunk," he says to excuse himself from a booth in back of the theater.

Onstage, he goes into a laser-augmented dance routine any jaded club gal would at least have to applaud for effort, even before the lasers are synced to make it look like he is breaking off a stick of laser and wielding it like a lightsaber.

Goude works the whole Vegas experience into his attempt to reframe a variety show from a tourist's perspective. An acrobatic number is the result of "what happens when you get stuck on a zipline."

Anyone can make fun of Celine and Britney, and "Twisted Vegas" does. But it may also be the first spoof of a Las Vegas spa.

"It's the naked number of the show," Goude explains.

"When you go to a Vegas spa, you never know whether to be naked or not. Half of the people are; half aren't. So we do a naked act where we're naked and doing something stupid.

"We try to spoof everything. It's right after the 'O' spoof, so we're all wet," he adds.

"Twisted Vegas" is, however, family friendly, in the best cartoon tradition of throwing in jokes only the adults will get. "I'm hoping that funny is going to be a good way for people to see something," Goude says in his heavily accented English.

It's certainly the week for Vegas to bite the hand that feeds it. Producer David Saxe also has "Spoofical" set for its first preview Monday in the V Theater he operates in the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood.

If you don't count Ray Romano or Louie Anderson doing 10 minutes of slot-machine jokes, it's been more than 10 years since such a thing was tried with "Forbidden Vegas" at the Westin Causuarina in 2005.

Both new shows may sense the city's collective momentum is turning to star showcases, and that in a Cirque du Soleil-saturated city, any new challenge has to have attitude.

However, "I think the notion that we're making fun of (Vegas) is incorrect," says Michael Goudeau, a veteran Las Vegas performer collaborating with Goude on the project.

"This is a travel postcard from the view of French tourists. It's his experiences, his perceptions. It's him passing along what Vegas was when he got here. It is not a takedown."

With maybe one exception. "The only active takedown is probably Cirque (du Soleil), because Cirque has become so all-pervasive in this town," Goudeau adds. "You always want to be punching up."

And like Cirque in its early days, Goudeau says, "what we're hoping to do is bring the personality back to the acts." They didn't have to look far to recruit Las Vegas' own Kristef Brothers, who honed their comedic acrobatics for "America's Got Talent."

Goudeau spent years as the apple-juggling sidekick to magician Lance Burton and went on to write Penn & Teller's cable series "Bullsh*t!"

"People always say, 'Can you help me write a show?' But then this bastard actually sold it," Goudeau says with a laugh. "We had all these stupid ideas and now we have to actually build it."

Goudeau is also helping to translate Goude's French humor. "It's an ongoing battle," he says with a laugh.

"I've got that kind of (Ringling Brothers) clown background, so I'm trying to apply that to everything we can do here to make it more twisted. We want you to say, 'That's way too twisted, or weird.'

"We're still twisting, I guess is the right word."

Goudeau calls Goude the French Tom Bergeron, because he turns up on so many TV shows there, including "Incroyable Talent" and "Grand Bloopers."

The publicity when he came out as both gay and the father of a surrogate baby almost a year ago was "completely crazy," Goude says. "I thought it was going to destroy and crush me, and it was exactly the other way around."

Even so, the family already had decided to move to Las Vegas, a place Goude had visited with family since his childhood. His first Las Vegas show was "Siegfried & Roy at The Mirage," because "I was really into magic and Michael Jackson (who wrote and performed the magic duo's theme song). I met him more than 25 times as a French fan club member."

Goude started planning a Las Vegas show when he became a part-year resident in 2008, before making the permanent move in 2012.

"Why do you come here when everything is going so well in your country? Because you want challenge in your life."

He has another big one coming up in Paris in September as the creator of "Timeo," a theatrical circus show about a wheelchair-bound boy who wants to join the circus.

By then he should know if "Twisted Vegas" becomes the main focus of his career, and thus a good problem to have for his husband, who has enjoyed "kind of a vacation" from the limelight and paparazzi.

"Now he's worried that again (there will be) photographers like there are in Paris when we walk together."

— Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com and follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.

Alex Goude, director, writer, producer and star of Ã¾ÃÃºTwisted Vegas,Ã¾ÃÃ¹ rehearses at the Westgate Las Vegas hotel-casino at 3000 Paradise Road in Las Vegas on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. Bill Hughes/Las Vegas Review-Journal