Vegas comic headliner Tape Face fills the bill with fake fans

Tape Face has moved into Harrah’s Showroom from his House of Tape theater for his pandemic reopening. The headlining comic mime was rehearsing Saturday afternoon and said to drop in to check out the surroundings if I was in the neighborhood.

Simple enough. I arrived at the upstairs showroom and was intercepted by a pair of ushers with COVID-compliance forms and a temperature gauge. At that moment, Tape Face (legal name of Sam Wills) was onstage working out a plate-spinning routine, for what seemed to be dozens of audience members seated in the lower section.

#TheScene ... @TapeFaceBoy and 100 of his closest friends @HarrahsVegas. Show is back Wednesday night. #Vegas #Entertainment #RJNow @reviewjournal pic.twitter.com/bYcsP3q1Bz

— John Katsilometes (@johnnykats) November 8, 2020

“Is this a friends-and-family performance?” I whispered to the ushers, while observing the back of the audience’s heads. “I thought he was just building the show. I didn’t know this was a full run-through.”

Here are the mannequins @TapeFaceBoy’s @HarrahsVegas show. He’s back Wednesday night, but they are ready now. I say 1.000 heads, but actually he spent $1,000 on 100 heads. Anyway, check it out ... @reviewjournal #Vegas #RJNow pic.twitter.com/OGJBA05UiO

— John Katsilometes (@johnnykats) November 8, 2020

I kept talking in hushed tones, as if not to bother anyone watching this performance.

“Who are these people?” I asked the staff, who looked at me like I was nuts. “I should know some of them.”

Finally, as I moved closer to the seated figures, it hit me: mannequins. A whole lot of ‘em. Tape Face had populated the showroom with 100 dummies. There were more plants in this room than you’d find at Star Nursery.

I reached Wills onstage to confess, “You got me. I thought they were real.” His response was a pumped fist, and to shout, “Yes!”

As it is, Tape Face, with vaunted comic sidekick Christina Balonek as Phyllis Vanillis, returns for real at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. The dummies will stay for as long as the production runs in the showroom. They occupy the 25-foot Entertainment Moat, or in this case Comedy Moat, helping fill what would otherwise be empty seats.

“Being an old street performer, I realized that having this Comedy Moat, we needed to put something in it,” Wills said from the stage. “We needed an audience, so the best thing was to build one.” The heads cost about $10 apiece, ordered through Amazon.com, meaning the entire buy-in was around $1,000. Money well spent.

The seated figures are in wigs, wearing all sorts of outfits, among them Guns N’ Roses and Metallica tour shirts, a Puma pullover, floral-print dress, and a Jamaica tourist T-shirt. There’s even a stuffed dog in the mannequin section.

Wills is also offering a competition on his website where fans can submit images of themselves to be taped to the mannequin heads. Actual taped faces, in other words.

As Wills said, if you buy into the concept, “You will exist at the show forever.” Count me in.

Paco’s Fiasco

Brian “Paco” Alvarez says he had not planned to work at Area15’s Museum Fiasco, or for anyone, until about three weeks ago. But a conversation with Ryan Doherty of Corner Bar Management helped sway Alvarez’s decision, and he’s led the opening of Museum Fiasco’s first installment, “Cluster.”

Dig it: @LasVegasPaco @AREA15official #MuseumFiasco ... #Vegas #art #RJNow. @reviewjournal pic.twitter.com/ptd2zohT4b

— John Katsilometes (@johnnykats) November 8, 2020

“I have been having a blast doing my own thing, running my own company and creating art around town,” Alvarez says. “But I have really admired what Ryan has done downtown, and his ideas for Area15. I am having a great time with it.”

Alvarez also heads up a Las Vegas touring company, and has joined such Vegas art figures as Gear Duran and Mario Reyes in creating murals at Adult Superstore locations in Las Vegas. Doherty founded Corner Bar, which operates Museum Fiasco and also such Fremont East hangs as Commonwealth/Laundry Room and Park on Fremont.

Museum Fiasco actually opened to the public over the weekend, after announcing a Nov. 13 launch. A wave of textured LED lights and penetrating sound, certain to be a haven for TikTok videos.

A bite of #MuseumFiasco “Cluster” exhibit @AREA15official. Immersive museum is open now. @reviewjournal #RJNow #art #Entertainment pic.twitter.com/Xxbjeh3yBd

— John Katsilometes (@johnnykats) November 8, 2020

The museum follows the German Kunsthalle model, which is a non-collection-based museum that hosts rotating exhibits. Alvarez is steering clear of “attraction” as a description.

“This is a museum, which you are actually inside, and should be treated as art,” Alvarez says of a museum experience that makes the adrenaline rush. “It’s great for grown-ups, and we’re going to be touring students through here. It’s been wonderful. I feel like a kid again.”

Zany, and also wacky

Saturday night I pulled up next to a Kia sedan at the Tropicana self-parking garage. The driver was in a suit and tie, seemingly ready to do business at the hotel. I ran into him at our shared destination, Laugh Factory. He was veteran comic and the night’s headliner Bob Zany. This was the second random run-in with a comedian over the weekend (I’d unexpectedly bumped into John Caponera on Thursday at Brad Garrett’s Comedy Club at MGM Grand).

“Please check on our cars every 10 minutes or so,” Zany said prior to the 8:30 p.m. show, where he shared the bill with host Traci Skene and featured act Brian Kim. This comic lineup of Las Vegas residents ably navigated the show’s spaced-out seating.

“They said I would never make it to a comedy club with a separated audience of 40 people, on the second-floor mezzanine of a club at the Tropicana,” Zany started. “Well, I proved them wrong!”

Club operator Harry Basil is actually seating the room at 80, max, and it was sold out for two shows per night Thursday through Sunday. Consequently, the hotel has actually reported improved gaming revenue from the club’s reopening weekend.

“We’re showing least 140 coming into the hotel from outside the property,” Basil says, referring to the total crowd count for two shows. “We’ve always draw from outside the property, and a lot of those people stay and play.”

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.