Jeff Trachta's likability and hard work to please audiences help overcome weaker parts of his variety act. Photos by Craig L. Moran. Jeff Trachta is best-known for his role as Thorne on the soap "The Bold and the Beautiful."

If there's a checklist for putting on an old-school, one-man variety show, Jeff Trachta remembered just about everything.

Comic impressions? Check. Dramatic singing? Autobiographical anecdotes? Funny drag? Yes, yep and yessirree.

The only thing he forgot was, "Making it look easy (except for when the audience is supposed to notice how hard you're working)."

Trachta is an unknown to a lot of us, but hugely popular to those who know him from his long-running role as Thorne on the CBS soap "The Bold and the Beautiful." Even that small niche of fame is more than Danny Gans or Clint Holmes had before they became stars on the Strip, proving strong word of mouth can compensate for recognition.

Trachta's modest start up that ladder is a one-man afternoon show at the Rio, interrupted after only a few weeks by Prince's apparent takeover of Club Rio. On Thursday, Trachta moved across the casino's Masquerade Village to the Chippendales Theater.

It's still not entirely a "one-man" show, thanks to a gimmick familiar from Eddie Murphy's "Nutty Professor" movies. Trachta uses video to show himself in latex makeup as his own Motown backing chorus or as an entire "boy band" (infiltrated by Kevin Smith's movie character Silent Bob, judging by one of the costumes).

Sometimes the video effects dazzle, and sometimes they distract. Sometimes they provoke a laugh and sometimes they come off like bad "Saturday Night Live": the weaker the humor, the more detailed the makeup.

And because the show is not only sung to recorded audio but interlaced with the video, Trachta often seems to run in lockstep to the technology. Some of this problem should be solved by the move to Chippendales, where the screen will be behind him and the viewer won't have to choose between looking at him or the wrap-around video walls of Club Rio.

If Tractha's act seems overly influenced by "The Carol Burnett Show" of his youth, most of it is redeemed by his likability factor and the goodwill generated by his exertions.

Explaining that his father was a Staten Island, N.Y., TV salesman, Trachta does a long TV medley that begins with a dead-on impression of Archie and Edith Bunker singing the "All in the Family" theme.

More impressions come in a bit about '60s TV personalities such as Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly who couldn't come out and say they were gay. It's better than a "tribute to the GOP," brief impressions of past presidents that don't really go anywhere.

The comic bits alternate with songs including "Love Me Tender" and Billy Joel's "Honesty," revealing a strong singing voice in splendid technical shape, albeit in that musical-theater style that lacks a defining characteristic. It would help if these segments weren't sung entirely to track; it's too much like karaoke night to watch someone wait out a recorded trumpet solo.

The most unusual break from the formula checklist is Trachta donning a padded costume for a monologue as Trixie Kincaid, "the oldest living showgirl" in Las Vegas. Like the rest of the show, the humor is lacking just that extra push, the next degree of sharpness to push it over.

By the end of the hour, though, the guy has much of the crowd up dancing to "Shout," and you have to give it up for someone who provides something missing in a lot of Las Vegas entertainment today: Personality.

If Trachta is given time, odds are good he will fine-tune the shift from captive cruise-ship audiences to those who voluntarily pony up for a ticket. We could stand to hear more about his soap days, and since he talks about a Broadway turn in "Grease," why not a song or two? And though it's a tight budget, a live musical combo replacing some of that video would make him look a lot less lonely up there.