Friday, April 09, 2004 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

SHOW REVIEW: Strip shows feature something for both sexes

'Midnight Fantasy' at Luxor and 'Men, The Show' at Club Seven are both fairly tame productions

Stephanie Jordan, the singing host of "Midnight Fantasy," deals well with the limitations of a recorded score.

The beauty of the "What happens here" campaign is its wide umbrella: A Vegas vacation can be as voyeuristically naughty or as no-foolin' nasty as the customer desires.

The city's "adult" industry can be approached by degrees. A good-natured wife can escort her husband down the elevator to an innocuous booby show, the Luxor's "Midnight Fantasy," while a guy in the next room might be flipping through the "entertainers" ads.

Stripping is also equal-opportunity on the Strip. A few blocks north of the Luxor, the freestanding Club Seven offers women a retooled "Men, The Show," a bumpier, grindier edition of a revue that's now free to get in its customers' faces after failing in a more subdued showroom setting at the Riviera last summer.

"Midnight Fantasy" is successful at what it aspires to be, an entry-level foray into the topless show tradition. When comedian Carole Montgomery asks for applause to separate married audience members from singles, the solo acts are way outnumbered.

A new edition of the show reveals only minor variations on the simple-but-effective theme: The show's eight topless stars step up one at a time to lip-sync to a female phone-sex voice describing a particular fantasy, setting up the dance number to follow.

The good news for gents? The breasts are on display from the get-go and run the entire gamut, from all natural to serious implants. And you know how in most shows, one or two of the dancers won't be as striking as the others? Not to worry about that here, pal.

Alas, only one of the "fantasies" involves three women and one bed. Menfolk who don't daydream about vigorous chorus line dancing might be chagrined at how much of the rest consists of choreographed numbers or latter-day burlesque favorites: The solo number involving a chair and a mirror -- here performed by Jennifer Young -- or the peeling of business suits, shirts and ties to "You Can Leave Your Hat On."

The real audience contact comes not from the showgirls, but from the personalities of singing host Stephanie Jordan and Lindell Blake, a buff tap dancer who offers something for the ladies. Jordan has her own suitably sultry appeal, and deals with the limitations of a recorded score as well as I've seen anyone manage it.

Montgomery's 10-minute act is the most graphic thing about "Midnight Fantasy;" her domestic bedroom humor is sort of like seeing comedian Robert Schimmel's act from a different angle. Both find similar humor in the reality of sex once the mystery has gone out of it.

Montgomery gets her shots in, but a deeper form of revenge upon wide-eyed husbands and boyfriends can be exacted in "Men." At the beginning of the show, dancer A.J. Trunk outlines the rules of "no touching, squeezing, or grabbing" the talent, then proclaims, "What if for tonight, why don't we say to hell with the rules?"

That, along with the fact that "we do accept tips -- fives, tens, twenties," Trunk explains, is the difference between a freestanding nightclub and a casino showroom that must answer to gaming regulators. There's a bed on the stage of this show too, and an audience member (bachelorettes preferred) gets to share it.

Less obviously, "Men" now has less talking, more dancing. Gone is the Riviera's chatty emcee and co-producer, Collin Foster. One of the performers, Robbie Chow, now keeps things moving, asking the ladies, "Are you grabbing enough booty tonight?"

The major numbers from the Riviera are carried over: A homoerotic cowboy sequence, salutes to men in uniform and to the movie "Don Juan DeMarco," and Chow's demonstration of how to have fun with a flaming torch and a G-string.

No one seems to care that the lighting is stark and gloomy compared to the Riviera -- or "Midnight Fantasy," for that matter -- or that on this particular night, the motorized curtain was broken. The 160-seat room is otherwise a great match, conveniently becoming part of a larger nightclub operation as soon as the show is over.

There are also new dancers, new numbers, and a foray into the audience for cash dances, briefly turning Club Seven into a reverse image of a gentleman's club and proving that men and women aren't so different after all.

OK. Maybe that's going too far. But the two shows at least share one other thing: the "You Can Leave Your Hat On" song.