Cheeky changes at Sin City Theater as ‘Crazy Girls’ notches No. 28

By John Katsilometes

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2015 | 8:45 p.m.

The Kats Report Bureau at this writing is Starbucks at Planet Hollywood, where at the mezzanine level the topless revue “Crazy Girls” celebrates its 28th anniversary at Planet Hollywood’s Sin City Theater. Not 28 years at the theater; the show just moved there over the summer. But it has been on the Strip, at Riviera until that hotel closed this spring, since 1987.

“Crazy Girls” is easily the longest-running topless revue on the Strip, and its “No If Ands Or …” statue has found a new home at Planet Hollywood.

Sin City Theater has been under operational shifts since “Crazy Girls” producer Norbert Aleman relocated the show. He is now the theater operator in a lease transfer between his Pharaoh Entertainment company and Sin City Theatre Group (headed by John Padon and his original partner, Kevin Kearney). Thus, the Sin City Comedy & Burlesque show, founded by Padon and Kearney at V Theater at Miracle Mile Shops, pays rent to Aleman to perform at the theater.

A longtime standup performer at innumerable Las Vegas venues (including as Carrot Top’s opening act at Luxor), Padon also is a veteran comedy-industry entrepreneur. Until recently, he held an aquatic contract with Celebrity Cruise lines to stage SCC shows, but that deal has been doused and today the company’s lone outpost is at Planet Hollywood.

In the midst of this activity, Padon has just relocated to Maui. He plans to split time between there and here, as his wife, Dejah, grew up there and is working as a choreographer and instructor. Padon says this was always his family’s end game, as he can work from anywhere and says Maui is “a great place to spend my fourth quarter.”

And it could be the locale for another Sin City Comedy & Burlesque Show, as Padon can still open SCC wherever he wants. Maybe not on a ship, though …

More from the scene:

• Worth knowing about Human Nature is the most recent information “out there” that the Venetian overlords have renewed interest in keeping the show at Sands Showroom. Not so long ago, word was that it was everybody-out-of-the-pool time for the shows at Venetian/Palazzo, with “Frank: The Man, The Music” closing at the end of November and “Rock of Ages” moving to Crown Theater at the Rio after it closes at Venetian at the end of this year.

But SPI Entertainment head Adam Steck, whose company produces Human Nature, says the hotel hierarchy is interested in the act’s new “jukebox” concept to be unveiled in January. A favorite act among locals and tourists for more than six years now, HN might well stay at Sands, and at least two other venues — one being the aforementioned Harrah’s Showroom — remain possibilities.

• Hard Rock Hotel and Channing Tatum are said to be on the 1-inch line (football term, that) in making a deal to bring a “Magic Mike”-fashioned male revue to the former Body English. But the project has not quite funded amid chatter that there is further significant news to come out of that particular production.

Hard Rock Hotel and parent company Warner Gaming plans to co-produce the show, but the entire project remains on hold for budgetary reasons. Tatum himself has fueled speculation by coyly mentioning a Las Vegas project without specifying the hotel.

• One reason to check out the just-opened “Miss Margarida’s Way” at Smith Center’s Troesh Studio Theater is that show’s lead, and primary, cast member: Annette Houlihan Verdolino (aka Blanche DeBris, in many of her onstage roles). The cast member of “Menopause The Musical” is fabulous (fabulous, I tell you!) and has been entrusted by director Troy Heard to carry this show. Miss Margarida is the teacher in this show, and the audience is “cast” as her teenage students.

The show is highly reliant upon improv comedy, and Verdolino is such a capable comic performer. She’s held the audience together as the solo host of the Miss Exotic World Pageant at Orleans Showroom and has been described as “refreshingly above average!”

That’s my description anyway.

As Heard says, “You don’t produce ‘Hamlet’ without a great Hamlet.” It’s a finely tuned experience, the anti-mega production. “You’re not getting ‘Annie,’" as Heard says. The show runs through Sunday at Troesh. Tickets are $39 and available at the Smith Center box office, by calling (702) 749-2000 and by visiting TheSmithCenter.com.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.