Thomas John, of ‘Seatbelt Psychic,’ to appear at The Ridgefield Playhouse

By Linda Tuccio-Koonz

Published 2:49 pm EST, Tuesday, January 1, 2019

When Thomas John, a renowned psychic medium, was first approached about being the driver on television’s “Seatbelt Psychic,” he wasn’t interested.

“I basically said, ‘No, that sounds ridiculous.’” John said he didn’t think it would be a good idea to film passengers who opted to receive a reading from him (sharing messages from their deceased loved ones) after they’d used a ride-share app which led him to pick them up.

But his friend, comedian/television host James Corden (of “Carpool  Karaoke” fame) won him over. John said Corden and his team, who wanted to do more shows in cars, said “it could open people’s minds” to connecting with the spirit world, and “be a way of sharing stories of the human experience.”

John decided it could be helpful to people. Sure enough, the Lifetime show debuted in 2018, has an addictive quality to it, and may be returning this year.

Catching a ride with “The Seatbelt Psychic,” as he is sometimes known, isn’t the only way to get a reading from John. The Massachusetts native, who has worked with celebrities such as Courteney Cox and Goldie Hawn, will appear at The Ridgefield Playhouse on Sunday, Jan. 13.

John, who splits his time between apartments in New York City and Los Angeles, shared more in a phone chat. The author of 2015’s “Never Argue with a Dead Person: True and Unbelievable Stories from the Other Side,” said the show will be very interactive and that 90 percent of it will be him doing readings.

“I’ll talk a little about myself, then get to the main thing of bringing through messages... I will read people in the audience,” he said. What he shares will depend on which spirits come through, but John said don’t be discouraged if the audience is packed. “Many people come in groups with other family members, so there might be seven people wanting to hear from one person (spirit).”

John opens his mind and spirit, then waits; different things happen. “I might hear a message in my head or I will feel pulled somewhere, or I might say, ‘This is the person who is coming through’ and someone will say, ‘That connects with me.’”

Even if you don’t get a reading, it’s still inspirational, he said. “You don’t have to prepare, but certainly the most important thing is in days leading up to event, be thinking about your loved ones through prayer or meditation or thoughts. Be sort of asking them to come through.”

And what about those who don’t believe? “I feel I am offering something... If people feel inspired and want to come, that is the best way (to experience this). But I encourage people who are skeptical to come, too. There is nothing wrong with being skeptical.”

Basically, John said it doesn’t matter to him if some people don’t believe he connects with the spirit world, because his goal is not to convince everyone, it is simply to share his gifts, which he has had since he was a child.

When asked what he’s learned from his experiences, John said, “I have learned that love never dies, that the bond we share with loved ones is there no mater what.”

lkoonz@newstimes.com; Twitter: @LindaTKoonz

Bronx Wanderers moving to Mat Franco Theater at Linq in ‘19

By John Katsilometes Las Vegas Review-Journal

December 10, 2018 - 7:28 pm

The Bronx Wanderers’ very name indicates movement. And the popular family act is on the move, hauling out of Windows Showroom at Bally’s and into the Linq Hotel’s Mat Franco Theater in January.

Making official what had been expected for weeks, producers Alan and Kathi Glist have secured a preview opening of 9 p.m. Jan. 28, with a media premiere targeted for mid-February. The show’s weekly show times follow the same type of fluctuating schedule employed during Frank Marino’s Divas Las Vegas residency in the theater: 9 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays; 8 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, and 4 p.m. Sundays (tickets are $79, $89 and $109 for VIP; fees not included).

As previously reported, the Bronx Wanderers’ final show at Windows is Dec. 23. Their next room is significantly larger (the Franco room seats 650 compared with about 200 at Windows), and the scale of the production will be larger for the guys in 2019. But as they say, the act has performed a bigger show to larger crowds across the country before settling at Windows in October 2016.

“We started in performing arts centers where our smallest crowds were 500-700, up to 2,200 seats,” the band and show’s founder, Vinny Adinolfi, said after Sunday night’s performance. “So to be in a 200-seat room was kind of a change for us.” Guitarist, keyboardist and singer Vinny “Vin A.” Adinolfi III added, “Wer’e excited to be back on a bigger stage, and excited that Caesars (Entertainment) is behind us.”

Bronx Wanderers, which includes sibling Nick Adinolfi on drums and a lineup of top-level musicians, is an energy-fueled, concert-style production of rock classics dating to their “patron saint,” Dion DiMucci of Dion & The Belmonts, whose every mention from the stage is met with a chorus of angels. The production covers the family’s roots in the Bronx and friendships with those from “the neighborhood,” including actor Chazz Palminteri and Tony Orlando.

Since arriving in Las Vegas, the act has become close with Wayne Newton, who has also headlined at Windows and is due to close his run Dec. 30 as the venue is converted into a showroom dedicated to magic acts.

“Playing here the past two years, Wayne Newton has been a dream come true,” the elder Adinolfi said. “When I told him we were going to the Linq, he hugged me and said, ‘You know, things happen for a reason. This is going to be great for you.’ Ever since we arrived here, we’ve been surrounded by the greatest people.”

Onstage, the act plans a more extensive video and lighting production. Such a song as Billy Joel’s “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” will now play to matching images of New York City. One highlight, a video montage of surf scenes performed to the theme from “Hawaii Five-0,” can be further developed.

“The video walls and lighting package is going to take the show to a whole new level,” Vinny Adinolfi said. “Each show will be its own little adventure for us to play.”

This CHA stars column faves vocalist Anne Martinez and music director Kenny Davidsen and is LOADED with boldface action. Martinez’s annual show for the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth (NPHY) is set for 9:30 p.m.-1 a.m. Tuesday at the Copa Room at Tuscany Suites. Martinez and friends will be collecting such items as clothing, canned goods, school supplies, toiletries, toothpaste and toothbrushes, cleaning supplies, towels, games, undergarments and socks. An area will be set up for donations.

And the singing lineup is stacked and stellar, led by Martinez joined by Ashley Fuller, Lannie Counts, Al Bernstein (who I understand has been inducted to like five halls of fame just this week), Sarah Hester Ross, Chadwick Johnson, Jonathan Karrant, Cassie Stone, Jaclyn McSpadden, Stephanie Calvert, Amanda King, Eric Sean, Brandon Nix, Crista Leopardi, Charlene Carabeo, Sandra Huntsman, Xavier Brown, Jerry Jones, Jassen Allen and Cheryl Daro. Martinez tells me that’s a partial list. No cover charge for all this music (ridiculous, I know), so bring some items, do some good and be ready to groove.

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His PodKats podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.

Cindy Williams finds a new comic family in ‘Menopause The Musical’

By MIKE WEATHERFORD LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

July 17, 2016 - 5:46 pm

“You can’t buy laughter. And you can’t make it up,” says Cindy Williams, who knows a little about comic timing. Actually, 159 half-hours of “Laverne & Shirley” worth.

So it’s high praise to the local cast of “Menopause The Musical” when their new guest star declares: “These girls have rhythm. They know how to set things up and then, boom!”

“There’s nothing more wonderful than that godly talent of being able to make an audience laugh. And this show has it. This cast has it.”

Williams is doing a two-month stretch in the slapstick, female-bonding musical at Harrah’s Las Vegas. It’s usually performed with four characters, and the 68-year-old Williams came to town last year to learn the show with the Las Vegas cast, and then go into a Florida production as one of the quartet.

Instead, “I got whatever they call it — ‘the Las Vegas Creeping Crud’ — and strep throat.” So producers Alan and Kathi Glist told her, “We’ll find things to do for you in the show.” As in Florida, the Harrah’s edition she’s in through Aug. 28 creates a fifth character who pops up now and then as what Williams terms “a sympathizer.”

“Everyone laughs together and there’s just something so wonderful,” she says. “If only America could be that all the time.”

Once, it came closer. In the late ’70s, there were only three commercial networks and “Laverne & Shirley” often topped the ratings in the first three seasons following its 1976 debut.

With co-star Penny Marshall and an ensemble cast including Michael McKean, “the cast would work during rehearsal to make it laugh-out-loud funny. We’d try and try and try,” she recalls.

“We’d change up attitudes, our physicality. We just wanted to hone it into something that was laugh-out-loud funny. During rehearsal, if we laughed at it, that was our litmus paper. We were all of us an audience. If it made us laugh, it was going to translate to the audience and make them laugh.”

The show ran eight seasons and Williams was in all but the last 20 episodes; a dispute with the producers stemming from her pregnancy led to her abrupt departure.

“After a while you go, ‘Well, we’ve done everything we can, except I haven’t taken a bite out of your hair,’” she says. And so they did that too, rigging Williams up with “this little piece of wig in the back.

“I’ve never seen anyone do that since,” she adds. “But those were the lengths we’d go to to get a laugh, and we got a huge laugh out of that.”

Williams came to the series after co-starring in one of the biggest movie hits of the ’70s, “American Graffiti.” It was something of a pop-culture loop since “Graffiti” inspired “Happy Days,” and “Laverne & Shirley” was a “Happy Days” spinoff.

She remembers someone asking if she worried the show would typecast her. “I’m a character actress. I can play anything,” she replied.

But of course, “it happened.” And she has no complaints. “It became a blessing. A true blessing. From soup to nuts, a blessing.”

“The Drowsy Chaperone” got her to Broadway in 2007, but a stagehands strike curtailed her run after three weeks. Now she ventures out from her home near Palm Desert, California, to mostly perform regional theater titles such as “Always Patsy Cline.” Williams and “Shirley” co-star Eddie Mekka were part of a “Grease” cast at the MGM Grand in 2000, and just completed a dinner-theater comedy called “Beau Jest” in Kansas City.

“I love Las Vegas. It’s one of the few places on Earth that goes faster than me,” she says. “It actually calms me down.”

Last year brought the publication of her memoir, “Shirley, I Jest! A Storied Life.” The candid book fills in the details on a less-than idyllic childhood where TV played a prescient role.

“As a child I was like a latchkey kid, so television was my baby sitter. ‘My Little Margie’ and Roy Rogers and all those wonderful characters. I could live at their house. I was safe and sound and everybody was happy and mirthful.

“It just imbued me with a sense of humor. My father had a great sense of humor, but he was also an alcoholic,” she says. Fifties TV “just gave me a view of the world that wasn’t the world I was living in.”

And now? Full circle. “People will come up to me and they’ll say, ‘Laverne and Shirley’ got me through my childhood.’ I can’t even. … It’s an honor, a privilege, a blessing that you made some kid on a couch listening to his parents fight laugh.”

Venerable Improv club exits Harrah’s Las Vegas

By MIKE WEATHERFORD LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

May 15, 2016 - 5:00 am

Say goodbye (for now) to The Improv, but say “Schlemiel! Schlimazel!” to Cindy Williams.

The long-tenured comedy club received its walking papers from Harrah’s Las Vegas and closes May 29. Management hasn’t announced any plans to replace it and sounds more inclined to let the two titles also sharing the showroom — “Menopause The Musical” and “X Country” — enjoy arguably better showtimes and a little more breathing room in terms of in-house signage. (Remember, Harrah’s also has another showroom with three more titles upstairs.)

“Menopause” is where Cindy Williams figures in. Producer Alan Glist says the actress best known for “Laverne and Shirley” will guest star for the months of July and August. She will join the four-person cast as a fifth, new character for portions of the show, as she did for a production in Florida.

The Improv anchored the second-floor showroom since 1995, when it moved over from the Riviera. It’s a comedy-club brand dating back to 1963 and synonymous with impresario Budd Friedman, now 83, who retained the rights to the Las Vegas branch even after 18 other Improv locations were franchised.

Last week, Friedman’s office confirmed it was Caesars Entertainment’s idea to close the Harrah’s club. But Friedman and his partner hope to move it elsewhere on the Strip and may have something to share by the end of the week.

A few years back, Friedman acknowledged the proliferation of comedy, from club formats to weekend concert headliners, had “cut into the business a bit.” Currently there are five other club formats alone, including the L.A. Comedy Club newly transplanted to the Stratosphere.

“X Comedy” mixes stand-up and variety comedy at the Flamingo, a Caesars Entertainment sister property, which raises the question of how much in-house competition there might have been for room guests and Total Rewards players club customers. Since Angela and Matt Stabile also produce “X Burlesque” and “X Country,” they may have been deemed more valuable to Caesars Entertainment than the Improv brand.

“Menopause” moved into the room early last year. Glist says the showtime will change from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. (with an extra at 4 p.m. Monday). “It gives us an extra hour of selling time, which is always good,” he says. The schedule will stick with eight weekly shows through the summer, possibly jumping to 10 in the fall.

“X Country” will move from 10:30 to 10 p.m. …

The layers of irony are hard to sort here, partly because the details of Prince’s death still were being sorted at this writing. But here goes:

The once-grand showroom at the Westgate Las Vegas was made famous by Elvis as a live performer. But it has fallen on such hard times, not even an attempt to rebrand it with Elvis — a tribute show and neighboring exhibit — could turn it around.

And now it appears Prince’s death, like Elvis Presley’s, had something to do with irresponsible prescription drug use. So what’s currently holding down the Elvis showroom?

You got it, a Prince tribute. Jason Tenner’s “Purple Reign” moved from the Westgate’s smaller cabaret into the big room after Prince’s death roughly coincided with the closing of “Twisted Vegas.”

It’s a short-term answer to the venue’s long-term problems: being distanced from the Strip’s pedestrian flow as more of the Westgate’s rooms go time-share, and seeing the concert headliners — which were always its most successful format — divvied up among multiple venues, from The Orleans to the new Foundry at SLS Las Vegas.

Beyond the content problems of “Twisted Vegas,” it also sounds like there was confusion over who was responsible for dealing with ticket vendors and other business issues stemming from the venue’s three levels of oversight: Hotel operator Paragon Gaming leases the theater to a production company, Red Mercury Entertainment, which in turn contracts with show producers. …

Irony week continues: The big, big splash made by the news that Channing Tatum will direct “Magic Mike Live” at the Hard Rock Hotel next March eclipsed last week’s opening of a smaller revue produced by the guy who introduced a young Tatum to the male-revue industry and inspired elements of the movie.

You can find YouTube clips of a young Tatum and London Steele onstage together in a Tampa, Florida, club in 2000. Last week, Steele opened “Men of Steele” at the freestanding Tommy Wind Theater. Steele’s show will have its work cut out for it when his former protege’s product arrives. …

When magician Wind called in to update us on his theater, he said his family-run operation is now the producer of insult-comic Vinnie Favorito, whose years of crowd-pleasing work on the Strip were tarnished by multiple claims of unpaid personal loans, which ultimately cost him his room at the Flamingo.

Wind says instead of the “door deal” in which the comedian is reimbursed for tickets sold, they pay him a flat fee and do the promotion and marketing. The theater is getting crowded with Wind’s magic at 6 p.m., “Evil Dead the Musical” at 7:30 p.m., “Men of Steele” at 9:30 p.m. and Favorito at 10:30 p.m.

Wind and Planet Hollywood magician Murray Sawchuck filmed segments for “Masters of Illusion,” the CW series that returns Friday.