The new Laugh Factory Las Vegas at the Horseshoe celebrated its grand opening last week and this past weekend. Friday was the grandest of the grand openings, the place filled for GM Harry Basil.
Concrete headlined the early set in his 6:30 p.m. “mini-residency” at the club, followed by headliner Jamie Kennedy, Jimmie “J.J.” Walker as special guest host and K Frances Norris as featured comic. Legendary impressionist Rich Little performed an unbilled set.
Brad Garrett turned up in support, venturing from his club at the MGM Grand. Garrett is a longtime friend of Basil on the comedy circuit. The Laugh Factory actually took over the original Brad Garrett’s Comedy Club at the Trop in 2012.
I caught Thursday’s set, which was more typical of the Laugh Factory’s long-haul atmosphere than Friday’s event. The second-level, 250-seat club was two-thirds full, if that, and the famous arched Laugh Factory sign was not yet in place (stalled in delivery). The crowd’s mood was seemingly deadened by a day of Vegas overindulgence.
Kennedy noticed this characteristic immediately, saying, “I can only tell the jokes. It’s up to you to get them” and “When you don’t get a joke, you really don’t get a joke.” But hey, I was busting up in the back of the room.
The range in experience in that lineup was stark. Norris has worked as a professional comic for eight years. Kennedy’s comedy-acting career dates to the late 1990s in the “Scream” franchise (he played Randy Meeks). His stand-up career pre-dates even his film career.
Walker, for those who might not realize, was as big a sitcom-TV star as anyone in the mid- to late 1970s, as James “J.J.” Evans on “Good Times.”
A favorite story: David Letterman told me in a 2018 interview at Caesars Palace that his first visit to Las Vegas was with Walker in his “Good Times” era. Walker was on the same bill as British entertainer Petula Clark at the since-imploded Riviera.
“Jimmie was a big star, with ‘Good Times,’ and I had been writing for him,” Letterman said. “I got off the plane, got to the hotel and I was so nervous about being here that I dumped my stuff in my room and ran out to a vacant lot near the hotel. I ran around, settled down, took a shower and watched the show.”
Walker and Basil have been friends for 40 years, both living in Las Vegas.
This is the type of scene you will find at the Laugh Factory, and at many of the city’s comedy clubs. This is a tight community, and such headliners as Bob Zany, Bret Ernst and Kathleen Dunbar are busy on the local circuit.
The Laugh Factory provides those local comics more work. And as we have painstakingly chronicled, it closed at the Trop in March 2024. Its return, steered by Basil and authorized by club founder Jamie Masada, was long and filled with stops and starts.
Basil continues to run the Covina, California, club, which does torrid business in a vintage theater. Laugh Factory President David Fuhrer repped the hierarchy this past weekend, and the execs should feel good about where the LF brand has been reborn. The club is on a busy corner of the Strip and stands as the only comedy club in the Caesars Entertainment Las Vegas collective.
The plan is to run shows at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. daily. Special-event headliner residencies are set for 6:30 p.m. Fridays through Sundays (intel at laughfactory.com).
We’ll see if the reborn Laugh Factory is “Dyn-o-mite!” as someone once said. But it is back to life, and we’ll be back, too.
John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow @johnnykats on X, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source neon.reviewjournal.com ’
