Wayne Brady: Staying Another Year In Las Vegas; Looking Toward Broadway

Wayne Brady has had his own show at The Venetian since 2007 and today celebrated an extension of his contract there through 2010 and the announcement of his hosting gig on the new daytime version of Let's Make A Deal which debuts on CBS-TV October 5.

Brady is also retooling his show here in hopes, he says, "to bring it to Broadway."

The party today (where Brady walked the "blue carpet" as shown at left) was at the Palazzo, the adjacent sister hotel to the Venetian on the Las Vegas Strip — specifically, it was at AZURE (hence, "blue" carpet), the afternoon luxury pool experience where on Saturday afternoons they have DJ music, fashion shows, signature Absolut vodka cocktails and celebrities.

Dressed all in white, Brady arrived with his entourage looking trim, buff and happy to be there.

Brady's show, Making **It Up is one of the best in Las Vegas. There are set pieces, but it's filled with improv — which he first proved he can do so well on Drew Carey's Whose Line Is It Anyway? — and the audience gets into it. He closes with a terrific tribute to Sammy Davis, Jr. (when I saw it he sang a stunning version of Birth of the Blues a lá Davis) and, when it's over, the viewer is left with a "how'd he do that?" kind of feeling along with a certainty that Wayne Brady is one very intelligent guy.

So, of course, having a brief moment to interview him, I asked, specificially, what goes through his mind when someone shouts out a topic for a song. How does he figure out what to say? And do it so quickly?

"Let's say," he responded, "someone shouts out 'airplane.' Well, the first thing I might think of is 'black box.' But I stay away from that because I do not ever want to be crass. So I run through all the other words associated with an airplane — 'pilot,' 'cockpit,' 'seats,' and so on. It all goes through my head very quickly while I'm putting the words together."

In addition to Davis, he says he's been influenced by people like Sam Cooke. "I grew up watching all the old TV shows — Your Show of Shows, Ed Sullivan, all the variety shows these people were on and it made a tremendous impression on me."

In the next year, his Venetian show is being reworked "to make it more theatrical. I'm working on it with BASE, my producers, to add a book to make it my story and we're looking at bringing it to Broadway after the run here."

(Along with Brady's show, BASE (www.baseentertainment.com) produces Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectular at The Venetian, Jersey Boys at The Palazzo; Defending the Caveman at the Excalibur; Peepshow at Planet Hollywood and Wintuk, the Cirque du Soleil winter show at Madison Square Garden.

Meanwhile, Brady and The Venetian seem quite pleased to have the run extended and, when that's over, one might guess that the entertainer will continue on his successful path Making **It Up.