‘Sin City Comedy’ perfects the Vegas stand-up buffet

Las Vegas is such a buffet town that we hardly ever close our mouths long enough to wonder why. At home, mixing Chinese takeout with that last wedge of lasagna is a desperate act of fridge-clearing. But at casino buffets up and down the Strip, egg foo manicotti is a combo to wait in line for.

Turns out that the buffet approach works for comedy, too. A headliner has to be really famous before we invest in a full hour, so we buy the lesser-known stand-ups in bulk combos such as Sin City Comedy & Burlesque, which, as the name suggests, adds retro strip tease to the mix as well.

Though Sin City is now bookended by the same two comics — host Greg Vaccarello and prop-comic closer Joe Trammel — the variety of stand-up voices is even more striking after you see the experiment sharing its Planet Hollywood venue, Tom Rubin's longform concept piece, "Failure Is an Option."

After a management handoff, Sin City is now a tenant in the theater bearing its name. The comedy show's founder, John Padon, deeded the theater over to "Crazy Girls" producer Norbert Aleman. Though it's shamelessly tourist-slanted, locals shouldn't feel shut out because the burlesque dancers change and the two middle stand-up spots are filled by a rotation of about 10 Las Vegas-based comedians.

It would be hard to find a better balance than at a recent show. Vaccarello knows his host role, finding out if there are Las Vegas "newbies" learning some hard lessons, working the crowd to see if a guy up front is "a real Italian or an Olive Garden Italian?" and imitating Robert De Niro hawking Vagisil.

John Hilder offered the intriguing combination of being both a stoner and "painfully white" Mormon. Most of his 10 minutes flew by with a riff on the challenges of ordering pizza while high, and the miracle an "an angel showing up at your door with pizza" long after you forgot you ordered it.

The Mississippi accent of Bobby Wayne Stauts, co-host of the podcast "Rise to Offend," was this lineup's token nod to the National Finals Rodeo. Don't let the good ol' boy stuff fool you. Stauts was the evening's most original voice, whether he was talking about clown sex or the 40-1 odds that banjo music isn't going to lead to the fate of Ned Beatty in "Deliverance."

The modest (not actually topless) burlesque routines fell this night to the striking Amanda Nowak. Setting a dance to "Minnie the Moocher" made you sorry the Strip doesn't have more genuine retro stripping, which is more often preserved by a cult of enthusiasts in conventions or club shows.

The most skin of the evening is actually shown by Trammel, who sweats his way through dozens of quick-changes accompanying a machine-gun barrage of movie themes and quotes. Trammel has been doing this forever, and, as much as some may roll their eyes when he begins, there's never been a crowd he hasn't won over by the end.

Just goes to prove that if you drink enough raw eggs in your "Rocky" bit over the years, Sylvester Stallone is eventually going to make another good "Rocky" movie and your act will be current again.

All of the talking comedians shared the knack of making us feel like we were being let in on a secret, which you also think would be the case at "Failure Is an Option." Rubin's spoof of self-help gurus such as Tony Robbins is booked through at least February.

But on this day, a tough little crowd wasn't buying what he was fake-selling. It could be Rubin is so dead-on with his parody that it seemed more like a real PowerPoint presentation than a comedy act.

It could be the formality of the structure doesn't let us get to know him, either as a character or a real person.

It could be he just needed better jokes.

In fact, it was a bit of all three for this promising concept in need of more work: Rubin using his suit and slideshow to subvert self-help cliches such as "visualization," telling us we just need to chill out: "Do you think you can ever just be happy? We are jealous, angry people."

You wonder if he'd be more true to his theme if he took off his jacket and pulled out a beanbag, beer and bong instead of continuing to pace the stage like the people he's mocking.

Either way he's talking at us, not to us, something you're never likely to see the Sin City guys do.

— Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com anf follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.