Plenty of adding, subtracting downtown

I may not be smarter than a fifth-grader, but I have mastered some math for downtown shows: Four times zero equals zero. Two minus one equals one. But we still could get to eight, nine or 10.

Four shows wait for a green light to return to the Plaza, and the Golden Nugget is down to one. But four new ones are on deck to open down Fremont Street at The D.

The four Plaza shows let a Jan. 15 target date slip by, while hotel management continues to negotiate with the producers to devise a new system to run the showroom and its box office.

"I'm hoping patience is a virtue here," says "Bite" producer Tim Molyneux. He now says it would be the end of the month or early February before his topless revue could reopen.

Regardless of who provides new light and sound equipment, the gear would have to be programmed and the cast brought back up to speed after more than a month of unplanned vacation.

Most of the "Bite" performers have other jobs, he added, and have been patient as well, Molyneux adds.

Complaints about the showroom's operation from Molyneux and Matthew Resler, co-producer of "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" and "Grand Ole Vegas Revue," resulted in the ouster of third-party showroom operator Anthony Cools last month.

All three shows, as well as "The Phat Pack," had to close by New Year's Day once it was decided Cools would remove his sound and lighting gear. Resler says he hopes the situation will be worked out by this time next week, but any deal "has to be the right one."

But at The D, a newly remodeled showroom already hosting "Marriage Can Be Murder" will add comedy-magician Adam London at 4 p.m. starting Feb. 7. The topless show "Raack N Roll," an Angela and Matt Stabile production that played Hooters Hotel in 2011, takes the 10:30 p.m. shift starting Feb. 1.

The D plans to add a fourth show at 9 p.m., one it's not ready to name, but one that also has been previously seen in town.

In between them lies the Golden Nugget, which recently set "Country Superstars" free to move into the V Theater this week but so far seems in no rush to find a new roommate for impressionist Gordie Brown. ...

Bally's, a property only recently awakened to entertainment options beyond the venerable "Jubilee!" is making some adjustments. Taylor Hicks brings his rockin' soul back to the property Monday to begin select dates that will keep him there much of the year.

But this time, Hicks moves from the Indigo Lounge to the more spacious Napoleon's lounge in the themed retail area connecting Bally's and Paris Las Vegas.

Upstairs at Bally's, the Amazing Johnathan has yielded the late berth that follows "Tony N' Tina's Wedding" to the L.A. Comedy Club, which launches Wednesday. The durable operation run by Joaquin Trujillo has bounced around various hard-to-find back rooms, most recently at the Cabo Wabo Cantina at Planet Hollywood.

The Amazing Johnathan says he is "retired from Vegas" after the Bally's run, where he thought he would get more marketing support from the parent company but ended up more as a sublet tenant.

"The last thing I felt like doing was trying to find another venue," he says of his 13-year run. Instead, he will put his efforts into reopening his haunted attraction at the Las Vegas Club and a new video podcast called "Burn Unit" that launches Monday. ...

A double dose of curvaceous burlesque news. "Pin Up," the new topless revue featuring Playboy and Bettie Page Clothing model Claire Sinclair, has confirmed a Feb. 25 debut at the Stratosphere.

Co-produced and scored by Stratosphere's early evening headliner Frankie Moreno, the salute to pinup girls from the '40s through the '60s is choreographed by Lacey Schwimmer of "Dancing with the Stars" fame.

But it sounds like someone else has been working on a parallel track and has a similar product that - are you listening, casino folk? - can be viewed Saturday night.

For the past five years, Melody Sweets, the "Absinthe" singer and burlesque dancer who performs her original songs in the show, has been working on an album. She celebrates the release of "Burlesque in the Black" with a ticketed ($20) late show at 11:30 p.m. Saturday in the "Absinthe" tent at Caesars Palace.

"Each song on the album is a different act" with a different theme and story, she explains. "Lots of costume changes, lots of stuff happening. There's big group numbers with the 'Absinthe' boys and some of the 'Absinthe' cast members."

Sweets is signed for "Absinthe" through October and opted to stay with that show rather than join "Pin Up." But now that the album is out, she says she will use her days off to "take advantage of being on the West Coast and do a couple of shows here and there and see where it takes me."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.