Sahara combining showrooms
The Sahara is set to consolidate its two showrooms into one on March 1. The only real surprise in the move might be why it didn’t happen sooner.
The Comedy Stop and “Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show” are both scheduled to move downstairs into the theater that hosts magician Rick Thomas.
A Sahara spokeswoman says management wanted to free up its options for the larger second-floor space that includes the venue known as the Congo Room. The venue took shape in 1999, first as a temporary arrangement while the original Congo Room was demolished and replaced by the current theater.
The upstairs space lingered to host several shows, including “The Rat Pack is Back,” Charo and a Platters-Coasters tribute. The downstairs theater opened with 860 seats in 2000.
The Sahara may be trying to reclaim convention space displaced by the upstairs showroom and buffet. But the room count shrank by 580 when the Sahara “suspended” two of its three hotel towers in December. There’s less in-house traffic to feed shows at the challenged north Strip property. At this point, all three titles will continue, but the consolidation suggests three is now the limit.
The Comedy Stop gets to keep its 9 p.m. time (after Thomas at 7 p.m.) after the move later this month. Hackett’s Rat Pack revue will move to a 5 p.m. slot.
Although the upstairs room has a good ambience for comedy, “basically our shows work about anywhere,” says Comedy Stop proprietor Bob Kephart. “We can do things to make the room look smaller and the stage look smaller.”
Hackett says the idea of 5 p.m. ring-a-ding-ding from a Rat Pack isn’t as strange as it would have been when Sinatra’s posse was alive. “I see much less competition in the 5 o’clock spot. … The audience that is going to our show is a little older,” he says. “Instead of going to dinner and a show, they’ll flip it: A show and then dinner.” …
Andrew Dice Clay has found what he seemed to be searching for while he was bouncing around town last year: a place to hang his leather jacket in Las Vegas.
The raunchy comedian will spend about 10 days a month, or a minimum 28 weeks this year, doing an 11 p.m. set in the 350-seat Shimmer Showroom starting today. That’s about 110 “Hickory Dickory Dock(s)!”
“It’s a great thing for us,” says Las Vegas Hilton marketing executive Rick White. “With Dice, you know what you’re going to get.”
The other two Shimmer titles, “Voices” and “Sin City Bad Girls,” will start a half-hour earlier. Clay divides his time between homes in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The Hilton deal still enables him to tour about half the year. …
Clay will have competition from “The Dirty Joke Show,” also at 11 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, at Hooters Hotel. It’s an offbeat, slightly theatrical premise that takes you to the back alley of a comedy club, where three stand-up comics — creator Geechy Guy, Mickey Joseph and Todd Paul (who also does a solo show at Hooters) — keep each other entertained between shows.
“I wanted to do something like a comedy show, but something a little better. A little more,” Guy says. Each of the three comedians go in armed with about 50 memorized jokes, then wing it from there.
Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.
