Rita Rudner returns home — for real — at Stirling Club

Rita Rudner’s next Las Vegas show is a homecoming of sorts.

Wait, check that. It’s a homecoming in fact.

Rudner is playing the Stirling Club at Turnberry Place, where the comedian was once a resident. Rudner and her husband, Martin Bergman, owned a place at the fancy towers on Paradise Road for several years before selling in March 2021.

Rudner’s familiarity with the venue, and the Turnberry community, led to her “One Night Only” show at 8 p.m. Oct. 28 (tickets cost $54 for members of the Stirling Club, and $69 for nonmembers; go to thestirlingclub.com for information).

Rudner has performed internationally, headlining at the Palladium in London and the Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall. Her history in Vegas dates to the late 1970s, when she played 21 shows per week at the Riviera Comedy Club. She later ran consecutive headlining engagements at New York-New York, Harrah’s and The Venetian. She most recently appeared at Rocks Lounge at Red Rock Resort in 2017.

Johnny Kats: You’ve headlined for years on the Strip. Sell us on the Stirling Club show.

Rita Rudner: It is so pretty. They have done a great job with it. I’ve got a lot of friends there. I want people who haven’t been to the Stirling Club to come see it. Maybe if they come see me, they can do a little looking around the club. If you want a good club, that’s a locals club that’s not in a casino, that’s the one.

I know you are always busy. What’s keeping you occupied right now?

I’m doing lots of stand-up. I just got back from Toronto last night, and then I’m working on a ship for two shows. Then I have two shows in Honolulu. Then I start learning my lines for the play that Martin and I wrote that he’s producing and directing at the local Laguna Playhouse. That’s called “Staged,” and we’re starting rehearsals on Jan. 2.

Do you think you’ll be playing Las Vegas more regularly after the Stirling Club show?

Well, this is what happened: I had a contract that Wayne Newton and I were going to share Cleopatra’s Barge at Caesars Palace. Then they closed the Barge, the precious Barge. So, I waited a year, and I waited another year, and I said, ‘You know, there are other things that I can do.” So, I just did that. We had to relocate. That’s one of the things the pandemic taught us was to do the things we’d been putting off.

What had you been putting off?

We always said, “Let’s live at the beach,” so now we live at the beach. It’s really nice, but it was nice in Las Vegas, too. It was hard to leave.

This show is going to be quite nostalgic for a lot of people who followed your career here.

I had been running around doing all the casinos with my dog, Bonkers. And that’s another thing I’ve been busy with, writing my memoirs (“My Life in Dog Years”). I’ve been playing Las Vegas for a long time. Before that I had a whole career on Broadway as a dancer and a singer and an actress. During the pandemic, I decided there’s no better time to start writing than when you can’t leave the house for two years. So, that’s what I did.

When’s the book due?

Oct. 20 on Amazon. It covers it all. I wrote it over and over because I kept forgetting things. I cover my stand-up career, starting at the Improv, being an opening act for so many stars. I still have the sign for when I was opening act for the Righteous Brothers at the Hilton. I love remembering all those things.

You played the Riv, the Sands in the early days, right?

Yes, it was the Riviera, and I remember getting my first gig at the Sands on the Strip. They wouldn’t let a woman appear by themselves, you always had to be booked with a guy because they didn’t want a female comedy headliner. I was going through all that stuff.

I remember when you started as the main headliner at New York-New York, and the Manhattan Express roller coaster had just been put in and was interrupting your set every few minutes. Felix Rappaport had the pillars in the theater filled with sand to quiet the rattling.

Oh, yeah. That’s in the book (laughs). He looked at me and said, “I’m soooo sorry I did this.” But when we became a hit, he said, “I’m soooo glad I did this!” That was the beginning of a really, really great time. I think it was six years that I was there. I loved it. What was great about Las Vegas was, I got to stay in one place, and the audience took the plane.

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.