It takes all kinds to call this home

RITA RUDNER likes to joke to her audiences that wherever they are from, Las Vegas is the opposite. And as a comic who spent years on the road before starting as a permanent headliner here in 2000, she is not joking about her appreciation of that difference.

“I love that I get to stay home and work in the same place I live. That is a miracle for a performer. I mean, Paul McCartney and Sting are still on the road. This is one place a performer can live a normal life. Yes, it is a silly town. But it is a great town to live in. It is a small town with the best restaurants, best stores, best nightclubs and best spas. Above all else, Vegas has allowed me to raise my daughter,” she says.

In her act, Rudner, who does not swear or yell or mock her audience, offers her domestic humor about marriage, daily life and motherhood through an endless chain of jokes and one-liners. She knows that she is hardly the most outrageous comic in town.

Coming to Vegas marked a major departure for Rudner. “We had a big house in Los Angeles, and we sold it. We sold our dishes. We sold our furniture. We just came here and started from scratch and changed our whole life. That isn’t easy to do in your 40s but we did it.” She started at MGM and has moved her show to New York New York and more recently Harrah’s.

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Blurring the lines to stir up disbelief

Like most Vegas headliners, the Rio’s Penn & Teller find ways to keep their profile in the public mind through outside projects. The duo created a Showtime series, and Penn Jillette is set to appear starting next week in “Dancing With the Stars.”

But it is his silent onstage partner, Teller, who is doing the most original side project. Teller is co-directing a well-received production of “Macbeth” running at the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C. Teller’s love of Shakespeare goes back to his childhood. “My father knew I was a magic-loving kid who enjoyed spooky stuff. So he directed me to ‘Macbeth’ to Act 4, Scene 1, the witches’ caldron scene, with all of the crazy ingredients. I fell completely in love with that scene and with these completely mad, articulate, androgynous monsters.”

And Teller’s decades as a magician only increased his affinity for Macbeth:

“Macbeth is a guy who has trouble telling where the world leaves off and what is going on in his head starts up. He has a lot of trouble believing his eyes. His hallucinations act this out when he famously sees a dagger in the air. I’ve spent the last 55 years of my life learning about magic, and magic is all about that moment when you can’t tell what is and what is not.”

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A diva of a more daring stripe

On Dec. 31, 1999, I was at the Mandalay Bay Events Center watching Bette Midler welcome in the new millennium. It was a show that was simply extraordinary for its old-school, over-the-top Vegas entertainment value that has always been Midler’s calling card. Midler has dubbed herself “the people’s diva,” and by that she means she offers a knowing and ironic wink to her audience in stalwart characters such as Delores Delago alongside her larger-than-life, maniacally self-centered Divine Miss M stage presence. So the possibilities of what Midler could create with a permanent Vegas show with a reported budget of $10 million were really exciting.

But “The Showgirl Must Go On” turns out to be a perfect title for a predictable super-sized version of a Bette Midler touring concert: a pastiche of the ballads and scripted routines that have worked for her in the past, with some Vegas touches added. Be careful of the “cheap” seats ($95) at the Colosseum. If you are going to see Midler, get good seats. Unlike Celine Dion, Midler does not have her image up on the massive screen behind her onstage, and so the diva, in the words of one longtime fan in the nosebleed seats, was merely “speck-tacular.”

Fortunately, Midler is confident enough to ratchet down the visual circus on the big ballads, offering “The Rose” and “Hello in There” with all of the spotlight attention focused on her voice. The contrast creates goose-bump moments for fans, more effective than Midler’s attempt at the world’s largest headdress.

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