COMEDY : Impressionist Anzalone Brings His Loony Tunes to Newport Beach

So what’s a trained opera singer doing in a comedy club?

How about impersonating Jack Nicholson singing Pink Floyd?

Or doing a Japanese Johnny Cash?

Or maybe his hip rendition of Frankensteinatra?

Comedian Tom Anzalone gives new meaning to the term musical comedy or, as as he calls it, “musical comedy mayhem.”

“I’m kind of like a musical chameleon: I keep changing all the time,” says Anzalone, who has more than two dozen singing impressions in his repertoire. “I take something natural about them and exaggerate it. Like with James Taylor, his stuff is so mellow you fall asleep.”

Despite having his James Taylor nod off mid-song, Anzalone’s act is fast-paced, full of energy and highly visual. Picture his impression of Michael Jackson singing “Billy Jean,” only he does Jackson as Jerry Lewis from “The Nutty Professor,” complete with buckteeth and glasses.

Anzalone, a favorite in comedy clubs and on college campuses around the country, is headlining at the Laff Stop through Sunday.

Armed with an acoustic guitar, he is able to conjure up an array of characters with a minimum of props. For Bruce Springsteen, he slips on a bandanna. For Roy Orbison, he dons a pair of shades. And he can do an entire medley of singers with black electrical tape:

Placing a strip down each cheek to make sideburns, he’s Elvis Presley. Putting a strip over his upper lip, he’s a mustachioed Jim Croce; and adding a small piece below his lower lip, he’s Frank Zappa.

The Pittsburgh native majored in music in college and took his singing seriously. In the early ‘80s, he even sang with the Pittsburgh Opera. But to make extra money he also sang in bars and coffeehouses, where he began to mix his natural flair for comedy and impressions with his singing.

Finally, he says, “the comedy just took over” and he realized that’s what he wanted to do.

“I had wanted to be an opera singer, but I didn’t have the discipline. I was just too funny, I guess,” he says. Besides, he says, none of his rock concert-going friends came to see him in the opera: “When was the last time you had a tail-gate party for Verde?”

Of course, Anzalone’s operatic training surfaces occasionally in his act. He does, for example, an operatic version of “Pinball Wizard” from the rock opera “Tommy.”

But as music changes, so does Anzalone’s act. He says he’s been doing a lot more rap music lately.

How about Vanilla Ice as an Italian rapper named Pizza Slice?

“Hey, put the cheese and pepperoni

“All over the dough.

“Put it in the oven

“And what do you know?

“I’ll make a million. Selling Sicilian . . . .”

Who: Tom Anzalone.

When: Thursday, Oct. 24, and Sunday, Oct. 27, at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Friday, Oct. 25, at 8, 10 and 11:45 p.m.; Saturday, Oct. 26, at 8, 10 and 11:45 p.m.

Saturday at 10:30 a.m.

Where: The Laff Stop, 2122 S.E. Bristol St., Newport Beach.

Whereabouts: From the Corona del Mar (73) Freeway, take the Irvine Avenue/Campus Drive exit onto Bristol Street and go south one block.

Wherewithal: $7 to $10.

Where to Call: (714) 852-8762.