Donny & Marie are selling out a new-fangled - yet old-fashioned - Vegas variety show

LAS VEGAS - To get to the Flamingo Showroom, you have to walk along the Strip and be hassled by shady men handing out shady fliers to shady gentlemen's clubs.
    Then you enter the casino, where sometimes you are greeted by semi-nude dancers from the hotel's topless "X Burlesque."
    You have to walk through the blackjack, roulette tables and slots, where people exult about newfound riches while other patrons, jealous and upset, watch.
    Then you stroll by the lazy multitudes at the all-you-can-eat buffet, and eventually you reach the showroom.
    In that showroom, past the living embodiment of the seven deadly sins, is an oasis of clean, old-fashioned entertainment that only Donny and Marie Osmond could provide.
    And in Sin City, "Donny & Marie" are selling out all 750 seats nearly every night.
    "We grew up in a different era of entertainment with variety shows," said Marie, who with her older brother Donny is headlining the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel & Casino six times a week for the next six months. "Nineteen-to-25-year-olds have never seen that."
    The hotel and casino that mobster Bugsy Siegel created houses a showroom that Marie and Donny believed fit them and their audience well.
    "The first thing that lured me was the room," Marie said. "We can really include the audience, and there's a uniqueness to it."
    "I saw the room, fell in love with it . . . because of the idea and concept of bringing traditional Vegas back," Donny said. "It's not concert seating, it's the [old-fashioned] booths and tables - what Vegas used to be like. And that's what Marie and I grew up with."
    Marie and Donny considered returning to Las Vegas for years, but it was producers Chip Lightman and Danny Gans who made the first move.
    "They are what is missing in this town," Lightman said. "It's turned into Cirque du Soleil-ville."
    Lightman and Gans called Donny earlier this year and asked if he and Marie would be interested in coming back to Vegas. Donny had been performing regularly at The Orleans Hotel & Casino, with his own three-to-four-year plan for returning to The Strip.
    That vague long-term plan turned into a short-term success, based on the family's visible return to prominence - Marie's success on "Dancing With the Stars," the family's celebration of 50 years in show business that included a European tour, an "Oprah" show where 100 members of the family gathered onstage, even the headlines that marked their patriarch's death - which added up to make it seem like an Osmond show wouldn't be much of an audience gamble.
    With singer Toni Braxton (who, coincidentally, is a contestant on this season's "Dancing With the Stars") having left The Flamingo Showroom months ago, the room was open and ready for an Osmond show.
    Don Marrandino, president of The Flamingo and Harrah's, expected the show to fill a niche, but he has been surprised at its cross-generational appeal.
    "I took Donny to a restaurant one night," Marrandino said recently at an after-show meet-and-greet that included Osmond family friend Robin Leach and Osmond brothers Jimmy and Jay. "Two ladies in their 20s sat next to him and told him that they were converts" after seeing the show, he said.
    "It transcends age, religion, gender and race. It's good old-fashioned entertainment."
    A recent Thursday night show drew an audience where women far outnumbered men, with most - but not all - of the audience older than 40.
    Trish Brown, 44, from Detroit, met up with her 47-year-old friend Carol Hooten, from Missouri, both of whom traveled to Las Vegas specifically to see the Osmonds. (On the weekend of Sept. 26, the Osmond Brothers were headlining The Orleans.)
    Janine Kunha, 48, of San Francisco, brought her husband to Vegas to see the "Donny & Marie" show. She owns an anesthesia business, but stayed home the day the Osmonds were on "Oprah" so she could watch.
    "I grew up listening to him," she said. "We had the vinyl, and we sang along to it with all my girlfriends. It was like 'Puppy Love,' like his song."
    Johna Simpson, 46, of Pittsburgh, traveled across the country to attend the show three times.
    "It's the childhood memories," she said. "It's amazing, the feeling of being a teenager again."
    Officials wouldn't say how much the production cost - only describing it as a "first-class, multimillion-dollar production" - but the show has rewarded The Flamingo's officials' faith in the power of the Osmond siblings.
    "The attendance has been overwhelmingly positive," Marrandino said. "The majority of shows have been sell-outs and if not sold out, very close. All levels of business have been positively impacted by the arrival of Donny and Marie: restaurant covers, valet, casino [and] occupancy."
    As a result, Mayor Oscar B. Goodman deemed Sept. 25 "Donny & Marie Day" in Las Vegas.
    "We're trying to get them to stay longer" than the six months on their contract, Marrandino told the crowd.
    No word yet on any possible extensions, which means interested Uthans shouldn't wait too long.
    "It's a very short drive," Marie said. "It's shorter than going to Hawaii. And cheaper."
    "Get the heck down here," said Donny.
    dburger@sltrib.com