That was my moan as I left the Aruba Hotel after the exciting local premiere of a thing called "The Gazillionaire Show." There was so much creativity and skill in this series of comedy sketches presented by the New American Theatre Project that even as I was cheering, I was wishing I could like it more. It deserves to be great rather than good.
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The irreverent 65-minute cabaret act, featuring a cast mostly from Los Angeles, gives us Voki Kalfayan as our host. Think Andy Kaufman as Tony Clifton. He's dressed in white tux jacket, ruffled shirt, dark bow-tie, dark pants, and gold lamé lapels and shoes. Not to mention the pronounced gold tooth. He looks like he's spent a lot of money on his coiffure. The grease alone must have cost a fortune. Yet, you'd swear he's just awoken from a week of naps at the Greyhound bus station. He tells jokes with conviction, seemingly unaware of how tired they are.
Then there's his bandleader, Penny (Anais Thomassian), dressed in what appears to be Goodwill's idea of party-dress chic. She has a little girl's voice with a hard woman's edge. She could be Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz" after a night of quaaludes.
Add to the mix a zonked-out yoga master (Wayne Wilson); a magician (Jim Slonina) who inadvertently kills himself in the middle of his act; a six-member punk band (featuring trombone, French horn and violin), one of whose members (Michael Richardson) likes to strip; an exaggeratedly Jewish troubadour (Amos Glick) who writes ditties on the spot based on audience feedback; and a couple of delightfully nowhere songs, and you have the makings of an enjoyably horrible theater experience.
A former clown, Kalfayan is a powerful actor (he's also the show's creator and director). You never see him peeking through the character, commenting on it. We accept him as this overeager, foul-mouthed braggart without question. The entire cast -- some of whom can be found swimming at "Le Reve" at Wynn Las Vegas -- has the kind of confidence that sucks you into this wacky world.
But the half-scripted, half-improvised bits need work. Yeah, the show's joke is that the toilet humor is supposed to be second-rate, but there's clever crude, and then there's just crude.
Kalfayan's character, though, is a brilliant creation. It's the sort of thing that deserves to be seen again and again as the years pass. Watching the changes in viewpoint as the character and actor grow older could make for a classic, long-running gag.
Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.
