Martin Short going solo at The Mirage

There's always a risk Martin Short would look stranded on a stage by himself, even though he is sharing it with Ed Grimley, Jiminy Glick, Jackie Rogers Jr., etc.

If you know Short for the characters he created, you also know the group setting he created them in: The Second City, the "SCTV" television version of it, and "Saturday Night Live."

Even when Short headlined a Las Vegas show 10 years ago, he recruited the Second City troupe then based at the Flamingo to help him out.

But this weekend he is truly on his own at The Mirage, doing the show "as if I was hosting 'Saturday Night Live' and played the entire cast." So he's not doing stand-up per se, but running offstage for quick changes.

"I look at people like Louis C.K. as like our philosophers. What they're saying gets us thinking and takes us to personal places," Short says. "I think of myself as an entertainer."

"By the time I started doing these (solo) shows I was already famous," adds the 62-year-old. "There's a sense of, 'I know that guy.' We make a different deal with people, I think."

Longtime fans may always hold Short close to the "completely mental" Grimley or Glick, the supersized celebrity sycophant.

But his voice is currently on the big screen as the sea lion Stefano in the animated "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted," and his live face was part of the past season of CBS's "How I Met Your Mother."

A stack of short-term commitments are "a more eclectic way of filling a calendar than saying, say, you join the cast of 'Mad Men' for the whole season," he says.

People of different ages may know him for only one or two of the things he does. "I've never had an agenda saying, 'I'm going to be a cult comedian.' I'm doing this for me," he says.

"You're not doing it to pay rent anymore, that's kind of covered. You have a more complicated agenda, and that is to stay interested."

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