Musical ‘All In’ producer hoping for full house

Come again?

Did you just say -- or rather, sing -- that your pair is bigger than ours?

Pair of what? Do we have to slap an R rating on this story?

"The first thing out of people's mouths when they hear about this is, 'What?'" says Tim Molyneux, producer of "All In: The Poker Musical," an original, in-progress homage to America's (card) Game he hopes will leave audiences royally flush with excitement.

"The purpose was to create a new genre in entertainment, an organic musical in Vegas that opens here first, then goes to Broadway, instead of forcing the Broadway model into Las Vegas."

Conceptually crossing song-and-dance with bet-and-call, "All In" shuffles a 17-song score including "My Pair is Bigger Than Yours" (see, we weren't kidding), "I've Got a Full House When I'm Paired Next to You," "I'm Not a Gambler, I'm a Poker Player," "Winning to Lose," "I'm Gonna Bad Beat You, Boy" and "She Did a Slow Roll Over Me" -- the latter one of several tunes winking at the joys of fun sex and four sixes.

An hourlong concert treatment of the proposed 90-minute production, starring veteran Strip performers, will be staged Thursday through Saturday at the Rio. The cast includes Jimmy Lockett ("Starlight Express"), Reva Rice ("Spamalot") and Brandon Nix ("We Will Rock You"). The performances, dealt out during the World Series of Poker, are a test hand to gauge interest from Vegas properties in raising the stakes to a full production that won't fold until it draws a straight-to-Broadway engagement.

"There would be a lot more script in the Broadway version," Molyneux says. "We'd go deeper, more character development, and initially there were 40 original songs we could use."

Producer of "Bite," with its sensual vamps at the Stratosphere, Molyneux is also the "All In" playwright/composer/lyricist/director, and maybe even the backstage caterer.

"Life is poker and poker is life," he says about the musical's hoped-for metaphors, such as bluffing one's way through trying times, pushing all of one's chips into The Big Pot of Life when emboldened by circumstances, taking chances, courting luck, losing bad, winning big. "After all," he says, "we're 'All In' this together."

As befits a show about limelight-loving risk junkies, there's little subtlety or modesty in the characters or their inspirations. Certainly neither can be found in "Suzy Flutz," who beds and bankrupts high rollers.

One protagonist is a blowhard billionaire named "Cash Trumps," suggesting he'll have hair the size of the Himalayas.

"The plot is that Cash hears of this woman who is one of the world's greatest poker players and she's playing in a tournament and it's said in the press she'll give her winnings to charity, the Save the World Foundation, and he just gets livid," Molyneux explains about this apparently soulless capitalist.

"He books a flight from New York to Vegas and he's going to play in the World Series of Poker. He says, 'I don't know how to play poker, I know how to play people.' "

After a championship game between nine bettors -- all characters drawn from the colorful eccentrics Molyneux's met at memorable match-ups -- dwindles to two, the sexist Cash squares off across the table from the top-tier rival he cavalierly dismisses. She's named "Norma Parks" -- so christened, Molyneux says, for celebrated "Roe v. Wade" plaintiff Norma McCorvey and civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

"I wanted the name to convey strength and integrity, not just women's rights but the rights of all people, to stand up and have a voice," Molyneux says. "He (Cash) calls her a little girl, can't believe a woman can play in a man's world. Head to head at the final table, it's pretty powerful. The 11th hour song will bring the house down."

His Norma Parks is Reva Rice. "She's a woman who's mature, she's had some scars in her life, but poker is what's kept her scars from being still open, it's her protection, that outlet every woman should have," says Rice, a veteran of both Broadway and Vegas productions.

"I love Vegas as much as I love Broadway and I'd love to see a successful original musical here. I've had a lot of experience in both worlds and I can see the picture clearly. We're an entertainment city for a lot of people, and Broadway tends to entertain a specific market. Let's hope that by the time he sends it there, Broadway is open enough to accept something that comes from Vegas."

For added marquee mojo, Molyneux even models a character on poker pooh-bah Phil Hellmuth, named ... Phil Hellmuth. "I sang the songs to him and he was hooked -- he said, 'This is going to be bigger than Les Miz!' "

Bluffs don't get gutsier than that.

"And throughout the whole show are double, triple and quadruple entendres," Molyneux says, though even that might be understating it. "I use terms and words that make people's heads go spinning, like when she says, 'I only play with the nuts.' Well, does that mean the poker nuts?" -- as in the best possible hand in any hand of poker -- "or she's eating nuts at the bar?" Or any other allusion he leaves unspoken?

As a run-up to the three-concert Rio run, Molyneux last week hosted an invitation-only gathering at his home, his cast singing selections from the genre-spanning score. "He's covering everything from country to pop," said Jeffrey Koep, dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which informally co-hosted the soiree as a thank you to UNLV donors. With blues, jazz and theater-style numbers shuffling through the mix, Molyneux's cast energetically belted, crooned and clowned with the cozy crowd.

"The songs are pretty well-written," Koep observed. "Hummable, tappable melodies. It's got the dancing, it's got the singing, it's got poker, but it's not really about poker. I think he's got a good thing going here."

It was an evening designed as a first small step into a mighty big dream. "I even want to create a theater where the whole theater is a house of cards," Molyneux says. "It'll be the Las Vegas experience. Instead of seats in the house, I'd like to have poker tables."

He's angling for a full house. But let's state this for the record: His pair is NOT bigger than ours.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.