Friday, December 19, 2003 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

New Tradition

Quality holiday-themed shows move Las Vegas away from kitschy Christmas celebrations

The acrobatic duo of Flight La Femme is the one act carried over from last year's Chrismas show at the Rio. This year's edition is warmer to the holiday spirit. Photo by John Locher.

Las Vegas showroom stages may look like vintage TV specials this weekend, but Bruce Springsteen and John Lennon are more likely to set the musical pace than Andy Williams or Perry Como.

As Las Vegas makes inroads toward a Christmas tradition instead of refinishing the showroom stage once the National Finals Rodeo leaves town, one of the key issues is tone.

Baby boomers grew up in front of the tube: "Color television completely changed my life," Jeff Trachta tells audiences as the star of the Rio's "A Las Vegas Christmas Celebration." But classic cartoons have become more cherished than the live-action crooning.

How then does Las Vegas build upon a fledgling season of Christmas-themed shows, walking the fine line between schmaltz and the " `Bad Santa' Goes Vegas" of last year's Rio gala, starring Rip Taylor and showgirls in red bikinis?

Susan Anton says you've got to set the mood right away. She borrows Springsteen's arrangement of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" to let the audience know "it's a Christmas show, but we're not all coming out with candy canes and sitting here with Christmas stockings on our head."

Anton's Christmas show at the Suncoast today through Sunday also veers off the beaten path to offer more personal selections, such as Beth Nielsen Chapman's "Years" or Lennon's "Imagine."

Those are the songs that can "provoke those better senses of us as people," she says. "Christmas is the one time of year we allow ourselves to get close to those feelings that are tender within us."

Lennon also shows up on a video screen during Trachta's rendition of "Someday at Christmas," the Stevie Wonder song that muses, "Someday at Christmas, men won't be boys, playing with bombs, like kids play with toys."

Trachta says he heard the Jackson Five's 1970 version of the song recently and it brought tears to his eyes.

At The Orleans, Tony Orlando offers nostalgic comedy in a reprise of "Santa and Me," the show he created in the resort town of Branson, Mo., and first staged in Las Vegas last year. The hotel stored his living room set all year for the loosely scripted play, in which the singer gets a Christmas Eve visit from the red-suited one.

Other casino-based Christmas offerings (See Showguide, Page 10, for times and ticket details):

• Kenny Rogers' "Christmas From the Heart featuring `The Toy Shoppe' " is the area debut of another theatrical format, with the second act featuring the veteran showman as a toy shop owner who gets help from an angel when he is unable to pay his bills. The single performance is Saturday at Buffalo Bill's in Primm.

• There's no reason to blow fake snow around during the Don Ho Christmas show Saturday and Sunday at Sam's Town. The Hawaiian Wayne Newton is joined onstage by his daughter Hoku, who made a run at the teen pop pack three years ago with her self-titled album and its single, "Another Dumb Blonde."

• Less familiar to the Strip are the team of John Brack and Simon Estes. Brack bears the unlikely title of "the leading figure of Swiss country music." In 1996, he signed up his friend, bass baritone Estes, for a project called "He Wrote The Book." The two have staged Christmas tours since 1996. They perform at the Stardust on Christmas Day and on Dec. 26.

• The Fremont Street Experience offers "Rockin' Holiday," a 20-minute show with two singers and four dancers produced by R&R Live, a branch of R&R Partners, the advertising agency promoting the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. It's the first time Fremont Street has offered a formal show beyond roving carolers.

Christmas on the Strip also includes holiday alterations to ongoing shows by Harrah's headliner Clint Holmes and Tropicana magician Rick Thomas. The cast of the Gold Coast's "Honky Tonk Angels" country tribute serves up a special edition, "Once upon a Magical, Musical Christmas," through Dec. 28.

And a couple of weekend tours are likely to include some seasonal favorites as well. Brian McKnight is the musical guest for Brian Boitano's Skating Spectacular today at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. Mariah Carey is likely to add tunes such as "All I Want for Christmas Is You" to the encore of her Charmbracelet Tour, which visits the Aladdin on Saturday. The pop singer first played Caesars Palace in July.

Both Anton and Trachta hope their Christmas shows lead to a bigger present down the road. Anton moved to Las Vegas during her years in the Flamingo's "Great Radio City Spectacular" revue, and she and her husband, Jeff Lester, now run Big Picture Studios. "Las Vegas feels very much like home to us," she says. "I would like to carve out a long-term situation for myself."

Trachta is best known for playing Thorne on "The Bold and the Beautiful" soap opera from 1989 through 1997. More recently, he's been doing the Bob Barker thing, hosting the live version of "The Price is Right" in Reno. The show packs them in, so don't be surprised to see Harrah's bringing it to one of its Las Vegas properties next year.

The Christmas show introduces local audiences to Trachta's arsenal of celebrity impressions and Lily Tomlin-style characters. "I have to say that's the dream. To create a venue for myself for a Vegas show," he says.

For now, he only works in a minimal amount of non-Christmas material. "It has a lot of heart in it," he says. "We were very careful. We wanted to make it more of a holiday celebration."

"Bad Santa" fans do have one glimmer of hope at the Rio this year: "Chippendales: The Show," issued a press released headlined, "Ladies Get Opportunity to Sit on Studly Santa's Lap for Charity this Holiday Season," with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation benefitting from visits to "our chiseled Kris Kringle."