Hits keep coming from NBT, Oberacker’s ‘Bandstand’ and off-Broadway star Tara Palsha

By John Katsilometes

Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2015 | 8 p.m.

The Kats Report Bureau is partnering with Nevada Ballet Theatre in the upcoming production “A Balanchine Celebration: The Best of Ballet, Hollywood and Broadway.” The show is 7:30 p.m. Nov. 7 and 2 p.m. Nov. 8 (for tickets, go to TheSmithCenter.com and NevadaBallet.org).

Regretfully, I will not be dancing in this effort by our city’s predominant dance company. But I will speak and also will walk.

The explanation: The Balanchine show is a celebration of legendary choreographer George Balanchine, sampling from “Serenade,” “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” and “Who Cares?” The latter is a tribute to George Gershwin.

I’m focused on the “Slaughter” scene, as built into this piece is a role for a guest star. I am to portray The Gangster, who is a hitman in a scene that opens the act. I do recite three lines in the bit role, but not, “These pretzels are making me thirsty!”

Instead, I am instructed by a Russian dancer (played by NBT artist Joshua Kekoa, who is not hardly Russian) to shoot the lead dancer, during the performance, from a position inside the theater. This mercenary act of vengeance is tipped off to the audience in Reynolds Hall when I intone, “Inside the theater, huh?”

This is not the first time a guest star has been used in this role. Former MLB star Mike Piazza also was asked to perform in this capacity a couple of years ago in a production by Miami City Ballet. As he said during his rehearsals, “I’m feeling a little pressure, but pressure’s good sometimes.”

Yes it is. We’ve had the one rehearsal, Saturday, and there will be several more. As I say often to Joshua, “Gotcha, pal.”

See the show to know what that means.

Onward:

• “The Bandstand” is playing to enthusiastic crowds in its showcase at Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J. The musical is a Las Vegas creation, conceived by “Ka” music director Richard Oberacker and his writing partner Robert Taylor, a lyricist and violinist who most notably performed a long run in “Disney’s The Lion King.”

The musical runs through Nov. 8 in its premiere run at Paper Mill, which has been on a hot streak recently for sending musicals to Broadway. “Newsies” premiered there in 2011 and “Honeymoon in Vegas” was launched at Paper Mill in 2013. “The Bandstand” might be next, as reports out of the playhouse are that audiences have been thrilled with the production.

More than a decade in the making, “The Bandstand” centers on a half-dozen World War II veterans who form a band and enter a statewide singing competition. The winners in the regional contest are to be awarded a trip to New York for the national finals, with the top prize a spot in a movie produced by Metro Goldwyn Mayer in New York. Their attempt to gain fame through this contest becomes troublesome, as the band members experience what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder.

One of the cast members, Las Vegas trumpet virtuoso Joey Pero, has emailed to report that audiences have been thrilled at the show and the cast has been “killing it every night.” Word from those who have seen it is the show deserves a long afterlife. Regardless, we have not heard the last of “The Bandstand.”

• It’s not often Tara Palsha is left to feel invisible, given her prominence on the Las Vegas stage, especially as the raven redhead in “Vegas! The Show” at Saxe Theater. But Palsha, recently married to the ever-telegenic actor and model Scott Moats, was often lost in the crowd in many of her Broadway auditions.

“I was thinking, ‘Nobody is seeing me,’ ” Palsha said in a recent phone conversation. “These were cattle-call auditions.”

Palsha moved to New York in June 2014, and her earliest auditions included a swing through “Honeymoon in Vegas,” oddly enough. She has found a spot in an unlikely (for her) off-Broadway musical, “Trip of Love: A 60s Journey Through Song and Dance.” The show is running at Stage 42 Theater, formerly the Little Schubert, and it is referred to as off-Broadway because its seating capacity is 499 — one seat fewer than the 500 required to be formally called a Broadway show.

Palsha was selected by director James Walski, who worked on “Starlight Express” at Las Vegas Hilton and who was familiar with Palsha’s work in Las Vegas. But until a couple of years ago, Palsha was strictly a dancer who decided to try singing largely because her mother, Renee, is a trained opera singer. Working extensively with Las Vegas vocalist, music director and composer Bill Fayne, Palsha developed her voice impressively — but never conceived she’d be fronting what is essentially a rock musical.

“I sing ‘White Rabbit’ on a mushroom. I sing ‘Venus,’ ‘You Don’t Own Me,’ ‘Somebody to Love,’ " Palsha said. “There’s no dialogue at all. It’s G-strings, fishnets and rhinestones. It belongs in Vegas, to be honest with you.”

A performer in such shows as “Fantasy” and “Peepshow” before joining “Vegas!,” Palsha laughed at that comment. “It just shows the power of being at the right place at the right time.”

• Ruby Lewis fired up Las Vegas audiences in her show-stopping run with “For the Record: Baz” at Light at Mandalay Bay, but she won’t be in the show when it returns in its next incarnation on the Strip (whenever and wherever that might be). Lewis has instead been cast as the lead in the first Cirque du Soleil production conceived specifically for Broadway.

The show is “Paramour,” which opens for previews April 16 at Lyric Theater and premieres May 25. It is the Broadway debut for Lewis, who was impressive as Daisy Buchanan from “The Great Gatsby” in “Baz” and is to be the guest vocalist in Human Nature’s holiday shows at the Venetian’s Sands Showroom from Nov. 21-Dec. 22.

As Cirque Theatrical President Scott Zeiger told the Associated Press, “We cast Ruby for her amazing vocal talent and acting and dancing. But the fact that she's unafraid to get 30 feet up in the air in a harness above the stage is a bonus for us.”

In a metaphorical twist, Zeiger discovered Lewis while scouting the For the Record production he brought to Las Vegas. If “Baz” does return to a Las Vegas stage, Cirque Theatrical is not likely to be involved in the show because it is not likely to be staged at an MGM Resorts hotel.

• Justin Mortelliti is returning to the already stacked cast of “Rock of Ages” at Venetian. The original Drew in the Las Vegas production returns Sunday. The show’s most recent Drew, Rustin Cole Sailor, is leaving the production as his contract times out. Mortelliti left the show last fall to pursue other opportunities, one being his promising music career, and reunites with original castmates Mark Shunock as Lonny, Troy Burgess as Dennis DuPre and Robert Torti as Hertz.

On this topic, I’ve had this thought ever since Eric Jordan Young joined the cast to slip him into the swing role for Lonny. I just think that’s a great idea. Not sure where it came from. Blame it on Rio.

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