Gennifer Flowers plans new cabaret-style show in Las Vegas

It’s roll-back-the-clock time, ladies and gents, starring Gennifer Flowers.

The fabled lounge singer, whose affair with Bill Clinton nearly derailed his 1992 presidential campaign, is planning a return to the stage, and you’ll never guess where.

Here.

Flowers was in town last week and over the weekend, scouting venues for a cabaret-style show either in a Strip resort or suitable off-Strip venue. She hopes to to open the show this fall, and is to costar with veteran Vegas impressionist Rich Natole.

The duo hope to open in the fall, or maybe next spring.

Natole is familiar in Las Vegas entertainment circles. I’d met him nearly a decade ago during his run in Wayne Newton’s “Once Before I Go” production at the Tropicana.

Natole played Newton’s manager in that show. More relevant for the developing Flowers production, he plans to dust off his Clinton portrayal and swap shtick with Flowers.

“We are just trying to have some fun with Bill,” says Flowers, who reportedly embarked on a long-term affair with the then-governor of Arkansas in the 1970s. “This is a music and comedy show. It is not mean-spirited.”

Flowers says she will focus on parody songs, and also some standards. “It’ll be a lot of innuendo, a lot of fun, a lot of Mae West-styled singing,” says Flowers, who has been a professional singer her entire adult life. “I love singing, and I love good, old standards.”

Flowers lived and worked in Las Vegas, off and on, for about 10 years beginning in 1997. Her most famous gig was as star of Breck Wall’s “Bottoms Up” production at Fitzgerald’s (now The D Las Vegas). She would occasionally stir up the the scene at such old-Vegas havens as Fellini’s Italian Restaurant on West Charleston Boulevard.

During her recent visit, Flowers ducked into Salvatore’s Ristorante at Suncoast, operated by her old friends Bob Harry and Jimmy Girard, who used to run Fellini’s. She says only that she wants a cabaret-style gig in town that will stick.

“I don’t want to say anything until we sign on the dotted line, but we are looking at a lot of places, and they are all noteworthy,” said Flowers, who is scouting venues with her Las Vegas manager, Pat Wall. “This is going to be a long-term thing.”

Flowers opened her own club in New Orleans, the Kelso Cub in the French Quarter, after she moved from Las Vegas. She took time away from the stage to be with her parents in Branson, Mo.; her mother passed away last July. She’s now ready to “get with it again.”

As for her relationship with Clinton, Flowers says she most recently heard from the 42nd president in 2005, when he was on a humanitarian tour of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction with former President George H.W. Bush.

Flowers, living in New Orleans at the time, took a call from an unknown number.

“It was him, and he said he wanted to meet with me and talk to me,” Flowers says. “I was very taken aback. It seemed almost as if this was a 12-step program thing, and he wanted to atone for things.”

She declined to meet with Clinton, saying, “It was a big part of my life, but I couldn’t do it. I just said, ‘No, thank you.’”

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.