Give the man this: He is thoroughly committed to keeping the tux as a showroom staple. (Photos by Erik Kabik | Retna)

There’s a story Wayne Newton tells midway through Once Before I Go at the Tropicana where during the late ’70s, he was asked to do a fundraiser for the UNLV marching band along with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.

You get the impression it’s always the late ’70s for Wayne Newton. As long as he’s on stage, he can keep reliving, night after night, the highights of his career — and that’s cool. You can see why anyone would want to do that. But even Tom Seaver had to be pulled off the mound at the end. It’s clear the time has come for Newton. His voice is rough and unreliable. He has to shotgun tea by the glass just to hit the big notes toward the end of the night. It sounds, in short, like Casey Kasem singing Katharine Hepburn.

You couldn’t help but feel bad for him. The whole thing felt vaguely like Waynesploitation.

As uncomfortable as it was to hear his voice get noticeably weaker as the minutes crept by, there’s a comforting quality to the quaint Las Vegas show of old. Wayne the comedian breaks out crusty jokes. Wayne the instrumentalist goes from piano to banjo to fiddle. Wayne the patriot spends an inordinate amount of time detailing his USO shows (and showing far more pictures of Civil War battlefields than we had expected). If you want to inhabit, just for a little while, 1969, there’s no other way to do it.

For a man whose signature hit is about reminiscing, maybe a whole show about reminiscing is fitting. If it had been just banter with the audience, or questions and clips with three, four songs tops, it might have been fun. But the sheer number of songs Newton does makes you feel a little bit like a mule is getting pushed too far, and you’re holding the whip.

Newton cuts the show up where he can, mostly with video clips of appearances on The Lucy Show, The Dean Martin Show, or on the nightly news as a lightning rod of controversy for Reagan Secretary of the Interior James Watt. (There was a kerfuffle in 1983 when the Beach Boys weren’t considered wholesome enough. The early ’80s were, apparently, weirder than we remember. Then again, mostly, we remember He-Man.)

Billed as “Wayne Newton and Friends,” the friends (Cheryl Burke cameo notwithstanding) play out on video — like his duet with a choppily edited Sammy Davis Jr. (whose daughter Tracey was in attendance) on “You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Loves You” — or with disembodied impressions of questionable quality of Martin and Reagan coming from off-stage.

Creepily, Newton’s invocation of Elvis is on “The Letter,” complete with video leering at a despairing, handwritten note from the King that reads, “I feel so alone sometimes. The night is quiet for me. I’d love to be able to sleep. I am glad that everyone is gone now. I’ll probably not rest tonight. I have no need for all of this. Help me Lord.” Frankly, all it really did was make us think about locking ourselves in the bathroom with a bottle of bourbon and “Kentucky Rain” on loop.

Theer’s no arguing with Newton as showman. He laughed and smiled his way through the show, comfortable with all the old show-biz tropes like they were second skin. They probably are. It would explain why it’s so hard to let go. If a healthy dose of nostalgia is what you’re aiming for, you’ll find it here. But if you want those “Danke Schoen” pipes, you’re better off watching Ferris Bueller.

By Jason Scavone

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