‘Caveman’ star marks performance milestone

We get the press releases all the time. The 1,000th show of this, the 5,000th of that (this week, "Menopause The Musical" for the former, "V -- The Ultimate Variety Show" for the latter).

But the one announcing Kevin Burke had completed 1,000 performances of "Defending the Caveman" -- not all of them in Las Vegas -- stood out. For one thing, it's a one-man show. "Caveman" introduced a new genre to Las Vegas with its long-form monologue.

The Strip has seen some amazing longevity. "Mystere" guitarist Bruce Rickerd's perfect attendance for nearly 6,700 performances. Former "Jubilee!" showgirl Linda Green finally being nudged out at age 51, after a remarkable 23 years.

However, both shows are large ensemble efforts. You figure performers in the big revues think about what they're going to have for dinner. It's no doubt good for their sanity; helps to fight the repetition.

But when you're up there by yourself, "you have to be on top of it," Burke says. "I can't go over my list of chores and phone calls while I'm doing the show. I have to be in the moment."

There's another thing about Burke's track record. He does "Caveman" at the Golden Nugget seven nights a week. He won't have a scheduled day off until Super Bowl Sunday. By then, he will have done 50 in a row (counting a two-show Sunday) since his last break ended Dec. 16.

Burke scoffs at the idea of a day off. "This work is fun and it took me a long time to get here. I was in show business 30 years before I got to Las Vegas," he says. "I'm going to get every moment I can out of this."

He argued against having an understudy, telling the producers, "I don't get sick." They asked him, "What if you get hit by a bus?"

He says he answered: "Then I don't really care. At that point, you're going to have to cancel. There are other actors trained to perform the show, and you can get one of them in the next day."

Burke was true to his word when he suffered through one recent performance with a kidney stone. "You just create a little mental block around that pain and keep talking," he says. Adrenaline carried him along until the last few minutes, when "I was leaning on the (prop) TV while I was talking."

When he left the stage, "my knees buckled in the wings and a couple of the crew guys helped me back to the dressing room."

Most of the time, he enjoys mining the material for "deeper levels of meaning you uncover as you go. Or slight variations in timing that make the laughs better."

"It's never boring," he insists. "I never walk out onstage and go, 'Oh, I have to do this again.' Honestly, this is my idea of having fun. The only thing I regret about it is I don't have as much time to go see other people's shows as I would like."

Mike Weatherford's entertainment column appears Thursdays and Sundays. Contact him at 383-0288 or e-mail him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com.