Two shows could have expanded Las Vegas audiences, but took different paths to failure

They had, well, maybe not the best names. They both sought the same audience. And both are gone.

Beyond having all that in common, two recently departed shows were different enough to maybe shed light on why so many are closing.

“Puppet Up!” had skilled L.A. improv comedians and the brand-name puppets of the Jim Henson Company behind an otherwise tricky premise: Audience suggestions were turned into R-rated improv sketches, acted out by puppets on a video screen.

Yeah, try to explain all that on a billboard.

“Spoofical the Musical” went for the same audience: “The Daily Show” crowd, or at least “Saturday Night Live.” People who would roll their eyes at most Las Vegas variety shows and look for something a little sharper, or at least dirtier.

But this one was entirely homegrown. Native son producer David Saxe saw risk rewarded with his campy “Zombie Burlesque” and decided to try it again, this time bringing to the stage all the “what if?” song parodies and sketch-comedy ideas he had daydreamed about during his years of producing more straight-faced Vegas fare.

“Puppet Up!” lasted two months. “Spoofical” made it seven months. The first one was well-honed from years of touring but arrived at The Venetian with what’s said to be an impossibly high overhead and an unrealistic break-even point.

Saxe’s show had a reasonable budget, had he pushed it enough to sell some tickets. The ground-up creation was so close to him, he says he just never felt confident enough to declare it finished.

“I wouldn’t let anybody see it because it wasn’t polished yet, and it wasn’t polished yet because it’s hard to write comedy with 20 people in the audience,” Saxe says of the corner he painted himself into.

Saxe operates two show-packed venues in the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood. He understands how commissioned ticket brokers, concierges and cabdrivers can be more influential than traditional advertising and us press folk.

But even they weren’t invited. “I just didn’t know if I could sell tickets to it,” Saxe says. “I went out of my way to make sure no one saw it,” he adds with a laugh, until he decided, “I’m like this psycho dude who’s making a show for himself.”

“Puppet Up!” also needed a little time for word to spread but couldn’t afford it. Producer Base Entertainment is said to have repeated the same mistakes when the Frankie Moreno show closed at Planet Hollywood: Getting itself in too deep with expenses not reflected in what you see onstage.

The show was solid. I was rooting for it. But it had six comedian puppeteers, when four might have sufficed. Even with those two extra comics and the video cameras, nothing onstage suggested an overhead said to be north of $80,000 per week, perhaps even topping $100,000 a week for cast and crew, theater rental, management fees, advertising, a publicity firm, you name it.

With an average ticket price of $89 (for improv comedy!), they needed more than 220 people paying face value each night to break even. And since most ticket prices are deliberately jacked up so they can be discounted, you would really need closer to 400 people, paying closer to $45.

If the puppets had gone in with half that overhead, and a break-even of 100 per show? A more reasonable goal for a niche product that needs time to catch on.

Shows are closing at an alarming rate, forcing us to take a take a deep breath and remember something else will be along to replace them.

It hurt to lose our Broadway hit “Jersey Boys,” and now “Million Dollar Quartet” is closing Dec. 4. Steve Wynn’s pet project “ShowStoppers” is also set to close at the end of the year, though some wonder if that’s a negotiating ploy to cut costs with performers and musicians.

Either way, there’s hope in the rumored arrival of “Beautiful — The Carole King Musical” at The Venetian next year. (It probably cannot announce until it concludes its current run at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts.)

“Raiding the Rock Vault” left the Tropicana, but “Cherry Boom Boom” and “Band of Magicians” are moving in.

Is the answer to forget about creative shows such as “Puppet” and “Spoofical” and stick to these genre titles — we also have “Magic Mike Live” in the pipeline — as long as they mind their budgets and their ticket prices? Or just forget about it, because concert headliners are the town’s new drift?

(Even those bring no guarantees. Mariah Carey is calling it quits after another batch of shows April 26-May 13. But I suspect that one has less to do with unrealistic expectations than the star’s work ethic.)

Saxe was once the guy who wanted to program his theaters from 9 a.m. “doughnut shows” until the wee hours. After all, the theater’s staffing costs are nearly fixed, no matter how many titles he packs in. But now?

“With all this thinning the herd here, I’m going ‘Let it be. Don’t be rushing to jam 12 more in a room and hoping nobody else does.’ ”

Even if it meant killing his own daydream.

Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com and follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.