Crazy Benny looking for acts

Crazy Benny. Sounds like a used-car dealer. And with his red fedora, he looks like a guy who hawks them on TV.

He even advertises like one, with a trailer that can haul garish paneled signs up and down the Strip. They show Benny with a crown on his head and money in his grip: "Win a Prize!" "Get crazy in Vegas!"

His 200-seat theater plays his voice on an outdoor speaker, beckoning people inside. There awaits a cozy new 200-seat venue, perfect for stand-up comedy, a hypnotist or close-up magic.

The lights are hung, the red-upholstered chairs are lined up in a row. The stage is decorated with prizes for Benny's "Just Plain Nuts!" audience-participation show, with everything from dolls to porn DVDs.

But Benny Schapero is even lonelier than a car salesman these days. Really. His theater has stood like this, ready and waiting, for a full year now. He has been paying rent all 12 months.

Crazy Benny is upside down.

"Let me tell you, I need all the help I can get," he says. "Because this sucks."

In 2007, Schapero found a vacant lounge sharing a common wall with the Coco's on Tropicana Avenue, next door to Hooter's Casino and across the street from the MGM Grand -- or at least its parking garage. Back then, it was practically on the Strip.

It seems much further now.

Despite surgery for colon cancer the same week he signed his lease, Benny and his son pressed on with the remodeling job. But he knew his comedy show wouldn't carry the venture without a more familiar co-tenant.

Looking at pay-to-play operations such as the V Theater and Harmon Theatre, Schapero figured he could sign up as many as six acts. He's still looking, despite the fact that "I'm the cheapest time slot in town." He will let someone in for as little as $2,000 per week, at least $1,500 less than a producer is going to find anywhere else.

His friend David Brenner warned him not to open with the bottom feeders, or the place would be branded as a loser. But Brenner didn't sign on either.

Most entertainers want to be in a casino. They want the in-house signage and casino buys for players. The few theaters not in casinos have learned, like comedy clubs elsewhere in the country, to make money from liquor sales.

Schapero can't offer that either, because Coco's would supply the cocktails as part of his arrangement. Still, he thinks his biggest enemy is "image and ego." One prospect wanted to repaint the exterior. "I told him, 'You're buying a space, not the whole building.' "

He wishes people would "just look and see the advantages. If people would let go of their fear and have faith in their own ability."

Crazy Benny won't take no for an answer. "I have to make this work," he says. "I'm too far in."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.