Just another night in Vegas

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on April 5th, 2011

Sunday night, we hopped in the SHECKYwagon and turned on the Bruce Woodbury Beltway for the 14-minute jaunt to the South Point Hotel Casino and Spa to see the third and final evening of a three-night engagement of the legendary Shecky Greene.

We saw Shecky perform back in May of ’09 at the Suncoast Casino. Here’s how we described that set:

The set was tremendous– a stream-of-consciousness combination of reminiscences, songs, impressions, story-telling, Yiddish, dialects, messing with the boys in the band and messing with the audience. He would leave a story at one point if it intersected with another (or if he happened to deem a second third or fourth story more worth pursuing at the moment), sometimes returning to the original thread, sometimes not. A few old jokes were thrown in, too. At times it was old school, at other times, it was contemporary.

And this set was just as tremendous. This time around he invoked Kathy Griffin, the Kardashians and Biggest Loser among other pop culture icons. He also called out frequently to his buddy in the audience– Steve Lawrence! (Who shared a banquette with his lovely and talented spouse, Eydie Gorme!)

Ya gotta love Vegas! You go to see Shecky Greene and Steve & Eydie are in the house! (Lawrence came up onstage and helped wheel a cake onstage– as it was not only a show, but a celebration of Greene’s upcoming 85th birthday– and sang a song as well!)

If there was any difference between this set and the one we saw 18 months ago, it might be that Greene seemed a bit wistful. The jokes about retiring or “never working again” were, as always sprinkled throughout the set, but this time they had a bit of a serious undertone. Three-quarters of the way through the performance, we began to believe him.

Perhaps it’s because this engagement nearly coincided with his upcoming birthday (April 8).

Whatever is going on, we hope we didn’t see his final show. (Of course, who wouldn’t want to be present for such an historic occasion, but the man is a tremendous comedian. And notice we didn’t append that with “…for a man his age.” He commands the room, he displays multiple talents, he is a one-of-a-kind. And it is quite obvious that he absolutely loves doing standup.

And his impression of Buddy Hackett is hilarious!

Happy Birthday, Shecky Greene! And hope we see you perform next year!

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