Saying so long to Second City

If you go all the way back to the very first press conference, The Second City turned out to be a promise unfulfilled.

Oh, don't get me wrong. The sketch comedy revue delivered everything from an Afghanistan version of "Dirty Dancing" to a hip-hop instructional on office politics, and it's one of my favorite shows on the Strip. It has been -- albeit some years more than others -- ever since it opened in a converted Flamingo Las Vegas lounge in March 2001.

The show closes there Friday. A return is likely but never guaranteed, so anyone who wants Las Vegas entertainment to be more than eye candy should get there this week for a quality send-off.

"We chose to go," says Chicago-based vice president Kelly Leonard, explaining the odd contradiction of the troupe leaving because "we just didn't have enough seats."

Here's where we back up to the 2001 press kickoff, when the troupe's arrival was heralded by famous alumni George Wendt, Richard Kind and Fred Willard.

It was the last we ever saw of them.

Instead, Wendt's nephew, Jason Sudeikis, went on to further the Second City tradition of feeding talent to "Saturday Night Live." But talented unknowns are hard to market on taxi tops.

From the earliest days, Second City management talked about bringing alumni or celebrity hosts in for guest stints: Why not bring in Jim Belushi as well as his son Rob (who was part of the final year's cast)?

It works for the company's corporate shows, and "it feels very Vegas to us," Leonard says. "We know it's a format that works." But not with 200 seats. Another 100 or more would make it feasible to pay guest stars for more than just occasional visits.

The Flamingo wanted Leonard to advertise more. "I get that, and I felt bad that at a certain point we couldn't," he says. "All I need is 100 more people to come to a show in a week, and you're paying twice that amount (in ad costs) to get that." So the show was "riding on the integrity of the productions themselves."

The search for a new casino partner should benefit from ground already broken. In the earliest days -- "probably three (hotel) ownerships back," Leonard says with a chuckle -- management was skittish about the material.

"The three things we cover are sex, politics and religion. Suddenly it's all sex," he says of the debut effort. But the last couple of editions have been no holds barred.

"The offended will be the offended. We accept the fact that we're a niche art form," Leonard says. Even if Second City comes back at twice its current size, it still would be thinking small by Las Vegas standards.

"We're decidedly not mainstream, and that's OK."

Mike Weatherford's entertainment column appears Thursdays and Sundays. Contact him at 702-383-0288 or e-mail him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com.