Tony Sopra-- er, Baritone (Lou Diamond) -- delivers words of wisdom to an enraptured audience of his relatives and associates in "The Soprano's Last Supper," an awkward parody of the HBO hit. Photo by Ralph Fountain.

The room feels like a genuine supper club, not a multi-purpose convention hall. There's a band onstage, and a crooner belting out "I've Got You Under My Skin." Some people are up dancing, while others sit back and sip wine or let the pasta digest.

It's a fun scene, one that's hard to find on the modern-day Strip, or anywhere else for that matter.

But to get there, you have to sit through much of this thing called "The Soprano's Last Supper" at Krave nightclub.

You see, in this day and age, no one would open a mere supper club. It has to be presented as an inauthentic experience, a genre known as interactive theater, popularized by "Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding."

This one is postured as a spoof of "The Sopranos." HBO agrees to as much in a letter to Dillstar Productions, stating the dinner show has "adequately distanced" itself "such that it is clearly a parody thereof." This helps explain why Tony is now going by the alias of Tony Baritone "since he moved the whole family out to Vegas."

But fans of the addictive HBO drama should know the attempts to spoof the series are the worst part of it. The more the dinner show moves away from parody, the better it gets.

Not that it doesn't try. You actually perk up and pay attention when the show opens with the Tony character (Lou Diamond) walking out in his boxer shorts and bathrobe, as he has done on many a season opener. He scratches himself down south as he opens his mailbox and retrieves a letter, then yells an expletive that becomes the show's first spoken word.

You then meet the rest of Tony's guys at their pork store hangout, and witness a session between Tony and his shrink, Dr. Melfi/Melfri (Kelli Karl). You watch dances by the girls of the Ba Da Bang club. You find out Tony has been indicted, and that we all will be at his going away party, where a successor will be named.

The problem with these parody sequences is that nothing much happens. The comedy isn't broad enough to be vaudeville, or nuanced enough to be sketch comedy. It does little more than establish which character each actor is pretending to be, and revel in the fact that some of the players -- Jim Hitzke as Bobby Bacala/Baklava and Michael Delano as Phil Leotardo/Leotard -- resemble their TV counterparts.

Fortunately, it comes time to hit the buffet. The roast beef, chicken and pasta all hit the spot, and the actors who work the room in character say funnier things than they do in the scripted scenes.

Eventually, it turns out to be lot easier to turn more and more of the show over to singer Janien Valentine, a charismatic Las Vegas pro who starred in two theatrical musicals on the Strip, even if "Dancing Queen" and "We Are Family" don't have much to do with "The Sopranos."

I've been informed that since I saw the show, supervising director Tony Carro was trimming down the pork store scene as one of his steps to reduce the running time of two hours and 15 minutes (early arrivals can be there longer).

That, plus continued attempts to sharpen the comedy could make the effort rise to its quality setting. But so far, a wise guy wanting to eat while listening to Italian stereotypes shout at one another should opt for the original, "Tony 'n' Tina." Unless the Rio show has gone downhill since I've seen it, it just seems less forced and unfolds in more of a natural arc.

Not to mention the tickets are cheaper. Capiche?