Steve Bornfeld
Associate Editor
Contact: 868-4578 • Email
One of the state’s preeminent entertainment writers, Bornfeld joins Vegas Seven as our newest associate editor. A fan of the word “peripatetic,” he has worked for 30 years as a features editor, writer and columnist at newspapers and magazines from New York to Las Vegas. Stops included Hearst Newspapers, Gannett News Service, the New York Post and both the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Las Vegas Sun. Honored by the Nevada Press Association, Best of the West and the Society for Features Journalism, he has extensively covered the arts, including the development of The Smith Center for the Performing Arts. A Bronx boy at heart, his only complaint about Las Vegas is that he can’t take the subway to work.
Recent Articles
Sirc du Soiree
While throwing a bloody party every weekend at Evil Dead the Musical, Sirc Michaels plots his Strip takeover … and he’s only half-kidding
January 24th, 2013
Impresario of Evil Dead the Musical 4-D and a local theater presence only since 2011, he engineered a Vegas entertainment first in June when that shock-schlock show migrated from the modest Onyx Theatre in a Sahara Avenue fetish shop to Planet Hollywood. Voila!—the first successful crossover of a community theater production to the Strip.
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Drama of male-stripping is stripped from Stripped The Play
January 17th, 2013
Expect to find a “play” at Stripped the Play? You’d have better odds shopping for a G-string at a Disney store.
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O Jazz Fans, Where Art Thou?
Trying to attract younger listeners, jazz is its own worst enemy. The Smith Center’s ‘Jazz Roots’ program provokes questions about how to turn it around.
January 10th, 2013
Hopscotching around the FM dial on the car radio several decades back, this pop-addled music lover happened across some dude named Dave Brubeck, pounding piano keys with the subtlety of a crane operator on some tune with a fifth beat tacked onto the usual four. Oddly … compelling.
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Party-hearty Rock of Ages mocks itself with campy gusto
January 10th, 2013
Swapping a Broadway musical that took itself oh so seriously—i.e., Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular—for one that couldn’t take itself less seriously if it wore a clown nose, floppy shoes and a beanie, the Venetian has welcomed Rock of Ages, a rockin’, self-mockin’ blast.
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The (Luke) Duke of Swing
Good ol’ boy from Hazzard, Tom Wopat is now a standards- singin’, Broadway-lovin’ dude
January 10th, 2013
Consider his reputation as a Broadway musical mainstay (City of Angels, Guys and Dolls and Tony-nominated turns in A Catered Affair and Annie Get Your Gun). Or his post-Dukes straight acting (the sitcom Cybill, Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway, playing a U.S. marshal in Quentin Tarantino’s new Django Unchained).
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'It Was Not a Valentine': An oral history of Jersey Boys
Frankie Valli and his legendary band found a second life—and a place in Las Vegas lore—as a hit musical. Now a third life might beckon on the big screen.
January 3rd, 2013
Need we say/sing more?
A radio hit in 1962, the Four Seasons’ “Sherry” was reborn as a 21st-century Broadway anthem via Jersey Boys. Featuring lead singer Frankie Valli’s sky-scraping falsetto, the tune also doubled as a full-throated cheer for the Garden State, which needed some pop-culture cachet that wasn’t the bloody, crime-ridden world of The Sopranos. Overcoming other longstanding jibes at the state’s expense—Smokestack Central, Tollbooth Capital of the World, “A Turnpike Runs Through It”—Jersey Boys lent New Jersey an upbeat hipness.
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Coco Austin brings more than breasts to Peepshow
January 3rd, 2013
Searching for acting in Peepshow is like looking for a Monet at a paintball match.
That said, adding Coco Austin and those twin planets between her neck and navel lend this sex-tease-on-steroids the sense there’s a person inside Bo Peep’s corset, not just marquee mammaries.
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Showstopper
Reflecting on the year that was, Showstopper-style
December 20th, 2012
Welcome to Showstopper: End-of-Year Edition. Or, if you believe the Mayans, Showstopper: End-of-World Edition. Either way, following are review snippets for shows that opened or reopened—and in some cases, quickly closed—in 2012:
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Survival of the Wittiest
Artist Jevijoe Vitug cleverly portrays the struggle of immigrants caught in the teeth of the Great Recession
December 20th, 2012
“The sky is the limit when you get here,” says Filipino-born artist Jevijoe Vitug, who arrived stateside in 2007, purchased a home in Las Vegas in 2008 and lost it to a short sale this year. “The recession hit when I came here, but you cannot see that because you’re really happy. But then it changes. It shifted my perspective to just survival of everyday life.”
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Hill and McGraw offer a slick concert but keep us at a distance in Soul2Soul
December 13th, 2012
Launching their 40-show residency at the Venetian Theatre (formerly the Phantom Theatre) on Dec. 7-8, cutie-pie country couple Faith Hill and Tim McGraw attempt to refashion their Soul2Soul touring brand into a big-bang Vegas show. Mission: Unaccomplished—though not for lack of bang. Fans will lap up every note and twang, expecting little more. Speaking for the casual showgoer …
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