Producer says ‘Vegas! The Show’ is highlight of his career

Probably a coincidence, but the band rehearsing onstage does play the Rat Pack anthem "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" just as David Saxe escorts visitors across the stage to take a mindful seat in the audience.

Saxe is chairman of this board, and his Vegas bona fides are inscrutable.

His late dad, Dick Saxe, was a showroom bandleader. His mom produced "Showgirls of Magic." One sister danced in "Hallelujah Hollywood" way back when, and the other used to be known as "Melinda -- the First Lady of Magic."

And David? He's done some stuff since he scrambled around showroom booths as a young lad in the '70s while his dad rehearsed onstage.

He now runs the V Theatre, where the flagship title he created, "V -- The Ultimate Variety Show," has been in residence since 2004. His downtown warehouse/studio rents rehearsal space to the likes of "Phantom" and "Monty Python's Spamalot."

And now he has a second theater in the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood, relaunching a venue foreclosed from a vanquished rival, magician Steve Wyrick. It's here, in the newly dubbed Saxe Theater, where the band of top local musicians is rehearsing, and here where Saxe says he's putting on the most "legit" title of his 16 years of producing.

"This is finally me doing the opposite of what I normally do," he says of the show set to officially open Saturday, after a week of previews.

No one disputes Saxe's success at putting bodies in seats. But neither has he pretended to compete on the new aesthetic front, where Cirque du Soleil and hit Broadway musicals raised the bar and created a more universal definition of "Vegas entertainment."

Saxe says his new show will hold its head high. Those who wander in on rehearsals tell him they get goose bumps.

"This is the highest road I've ever taken," he says. "I always knew I could do this, it's just sometimes -- like with 'V' show -- it's more about giving 'em what they want. It's middle America. Let's do the juggling and all that, and let's be the best at that.

"But this feels ... so good, being legit."

It all hinged on one key decision. In April, when Saxe signed the lease for the 400-seat theater, he was imagining a kind of "Legends in Concert" meets "V" revue: Get a great Elvis impersonator, some guys who do Rat Pack tributes and stir them up amid showgirls and magicians.

But the literal approach didn't survive auditions. Saxe says he realized part of the magic of "Jersey Boys" is the Broadway context and the actors playing, not impersonating, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. "It finally hit me. ... Don't do it. It's so cheesy."

Instead, the ensemble cast materializes as ghosts of the neon boneyard (based on the Neon Museum-in-progress downtown) to "re-create it for you. To show you what we saw that's worth preserving now."

Saxe even wrote a theatrical script dramatizing the concept but has since pulled back to the streamlined concept of a boneyard caretaker (Eric Jordan Young) serving as the audience's ambassador.

"Vegas! The Show" still pays tribute to the classic Vegas, that place where "Las" gets lost. If showgirls can no longer kick the cancan in "Folies Bergere," you can see them do it here.

Production numbers also surround the '40s-through-'70s tributes to Elvis, the Rat Pack, Tom Jones, lounge legends Louis Prima and Keely Smith and even the Nicholas Brothers, thanks to tap-dancing twins Sean and John.

The cast includes veterans of past Broadway-type efforts on the Strip: Reva Rice of "Starlight Express" and Doug Storm of "Notre Dame de Paris." Pat Caddick oversees the all-live, no recorded-tracks band. And the show never stops for a specialty act, even if that's a very Vegas tradition in its own right.

"This is my baby. This has gotta work," Saxe says. "I've got everything in this one."

But it sounds like the Vegas spirit will guide him. Why? At one point he refers to "the Wayne Newton song 'L-O-V-E,' " which was originally a hit for Nat King Cole.

"I like Wayne Newton's," he says when corrected.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.