Friday, March 25, 2005 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Afternoon Delight

Ventriloquist Ronn Lucas helps restore an audience's sense of wonder

Ronn Lucas and his dragon friend, Scorch, haven't changed their banter much over the years, but still offer a steady stream of laughs in the afternoon at Harrah's. Photo by Samantha Clemens.

At one point in his afternoon show, Ronn Lucas chides his audience: "I just love crowds like this: `Let's get drunk and go see a puppet show.' "

Odder still is that by this time next year, tipsy ticketbuyers will have two puppet shows to choose from, with the satiric "Avenue Q" headed for Wynn Las Vegas.

But the puppets obscure the real issue. The stranger part of this is that Lucas is a ventriloquist, something that hasn't been part of mainstream pop culture since Charlie McCarthy, or at least since our "puppets" went digital with "Shrek" and the like.

It makes sense that Lucas thrives in Las Vegas. The live stage is really the only way to appreciate this obscure skill and still be impressed by cute little creatures made to heckle the crowd by a guy who doesn't move his lips.

Lucas settled into the Rio in late 2001 and quickly became an afternoon fixture. Late last year, he took a two-month break to explore other options, before returning to the Scinta Showroom in February.

The only thing that has changed is a couple of the jokes and the ticket price. I think Lucas was even wearing the same shirt as the last time I saw him; maybe he has an identical one for each day of the week.

Anyway, tickets are now $32.95 (including a drink or T-shirt) without any coupons or discounts, compared with $19.95 in the early days. That's pushing the traditional ceiling for matinees, and if you have seen him before, you may find the act a little too rote to lend itself to repeat viewings like his Harrah's afternoon counterpart, Mac King.

If you haven't seen him, you will see that not only is ventriloquism still a worthy form, but that Lucas leaves audiences with the unique sense of effort that only comes from a one-man show.

Of course, he explains, it's his stated mission to make people forget he's up there alone. He's really good, and really sneaky, at shifting the balance between vocal stuntwork and the Smothers Brothers-like routines with the puppets that make the crowd listen to the jokes instead of the technique.

"I have a black belt in ventriloquism," Lucas says of his ability to make it sound as though his microphone is sassing him, or like his puppet sidekick, Buffalo Billy, is yelling to get out of the trunk he's locked in.

But when Billy is on Lucas' knee, lasciviously chatting up a woman on the front row, the crowd says "Ahhh" after Lucas comes down on the little cowboy and makes him bow his head. "Some of you think he's real already," the ventriloquist admonishes, relishing in the "gotcha" moment.

Lucas also does a prologue with the animatronic dragon Scorch, a fancier puppet but one that clearly doesn't enjoy the same acerbic alter-ego status of Billy -- you know, the weird schizophrenia of ventriloquism explored in the movies "Magic" and "Dead of Night."

In fact, Lucas' great hidden talent may be in un-weirding the genre, keeping his own ageless personality in the mix and saving some of the punchlines for himself instead of the puppets.

If you want to get as highfalutin' as to say there's a subtext, it's in the way Lucas keeps calling attention to the show itself. "We don't need the sex jokes. We got all the kids (in the audience). We can do the toilet stuff," he has Billy say at one point. (As Lucas suggests in his own pre-show announcement, the innuendo isn't any courser for youngsters than a prime-time sitcom).

The closing segment strips the sidekick down to just a sock on the ventriloquist's hand, then to just the hand. By linking this segment to his own childhood, Lucas does more than just throw down a steady stream of laughs in the afternoon. He reminds us that all of the fancy computer animation has been as tough on our sense of wonder and imagination as it has been on the careers of ventriloquists.