POP WEEKEND : Wayne Newton Offers 2-Hour Monolith of Blandness

When “Also Sprach Zarathustra” blares at the start of a performance, and it isn’t a screening of Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” what you have is a sure harbinger of bad things to come.

Wayne Newton’s show Saturday at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim opened with a tinny rendition of Richard Strauss’s portentous music. Sure enough, over the ensuing two-plus hours, Newton built a daunting monolith of blandness.

The shtick with which the Las Vegas-based singer insistently beat a sellout house over the head was deadlier than the bony bludgeon employed by the murderous ape in the opening sequence of Kubrick’s film. But this wasn’t science fiction. This was Vegas, transplanted to the neighborhood of Disneyland.

Judging from the song list alone, one would expect that Newton, 45, could put on a decent show. There was a liberal sampling of Elvis Presley hits, from “That’s Alright Mama” at the start to “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” toward the end.

There were such R&B; chestnuts as “Blueberry Hill” and “You Send Me,” a couple of Bobby Darin tunes, including “Mack the Knife,” some country-and-western classics and pop ballads, including Lionel Ritchie’s “Hello,” that were tuneful, if on the smarmy side.

And, of course, there were Newton’s Top 40 hits: all four of ‘em. For all the money he has made entertaining casino guests bleary-eyed from too much fluttering of the slot machine lemons and cherries, Newton has pretty much struck out on the charts, where real stardom is measured.

Newton’s array of potentially strong material turned out to be so much fodder to be put through the blender and processed into Vegas Velveeta.

Songs are stabs at communication that, if sung with conviction, can provide a meaning and an emotional experience. For Newton, songs were just disposable decor for a cavalcade of personality. It didn’t matter what they were, or how they were being sung: It mattered only that Wayne Newton was singing them. Then again, maybe “Suspicious Minds,” really was meant to be tossed off as a frolicsome little ditty dedicated to “certain members of the press, certain Congressmen, and all wives.”

Newton’s voice sounded grainy, as if he were fighting a cold. He substituted struck poses for arresting vocal phrasings (he had trouble sustaining notes with power), and his pitch was questionable. Delete the somnambulistic mellowness from comic Bill Murray’s lounge-singer sendup, and you have an approximation of the Newton style. Moreover, Newton doesn’t dance, and if his backup singers were capable of generating interesting movement, we’ll never know it: He kept them confined to their chairs.

The predominantly middle-aged and elderly audience that came to adore Newton clearly had a different perception of the show. Before he had finished his second number, women in the crowd had bestowed six bouquets, seven kisses and one Mickey Mouse doll on their hero--with many more offerings to come.

In return, Newton gave the audience flattery. Several times he cut tunes short after a few seconds, saying that he preferred to move on to something the crowd would like better. While songs were quickly expendable, Newton took plenty of time for tired jokes and wisecracking, never-ending banter that featured just a naughty little bit of sexual innuendo, a homophobic streak and a milking of the old Italian-equals-mobster stereotype. Newton evidently felt that jokes about his own American Indian heritage made that OK.

A trumpet player in Newton’s 26-piece ensemble of singers and musicians was his main comic foil. Talk about shtick: Newton’s patsy even dropped his trousers at one point. Vaudeville isn’t dead. It’s alive and living in Las Vegas--and if a long time passes before it ventures this way again, that will be no great loss.