ENTERTAINMENT: ‘Mad Men’ sing and swing

  Some day, the early-’60s drama “Mad Men” will bring Don Draper to vintage Vegas on a "business trip" (wink, wink) if sustained ratings and the budget allow. But the supporting cast got a head start Tuesday with a swingin’ cabaret revue for the NATPE (National Association of Television Program Executives) convention, benefiting NATPE’s Educational Foundation.
  Some of the performers didn’t seem as confident as they looked in their snappy vintage garb, but everyone warmed to the occasion. As the smokin’ and drinkin’ host, Joel Murray came off not unlike boozy comedian Ron White if he were thrown into a time machine and sent to the Sands circa 1963 (where he would fit in quite well, thank you).
  What do “Mad Men” sing? Pretty cool stuff. Crista Flanagan warmed up the Depression-era hit, “Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee” after Murray noted its renewed relevance. Julie McNiven also dialed in to the new economy with The Andrews Sisters’ “I Can Dream, Can’t I?”
  Michael Gladis jumped a few decades a head, acoustic guitar in hand, for Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” Murray promised a couple of “ringers,” and one of them turned out to be Inara George of the lounge revival duo The Bird and the Bee, a group too cool in any other context to have any commercial appeal on the Strip.
  Nerves aside, everyone seemed to happy to be there. None more so than Robert Morse, no longer the best singer in the room but the one who brought the gravitas. Morse starred as J. Pierpont Finch in the original Broadway cast of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” He rekindled two songs from the 1961 score (“I Believe in You” and “Brotherhood of Man”), completing the circle to “Mad Men.”
   After all, the drama about New York ad executives draws its style and humor from the same well, especially if you consider how Des McAnuff’s 1995 revival of “How to Succeed …”  charted the course by staging the musical as a period piece, mining extra humor from the fashion and sexist attitudes of the day.