Terry Fator At Mohegan Sun

Helaine and I went to Mohegan Sun last night to see Terry Fator. He’s the guy who won America’s Got Talent–and he does ‘got’ talent. I’m not sure that’s enough. More on that in a sec.

Mohegan Sun is a beautiful casino complex. It is now as good looking as nearly all the hotels in Vegas (this is not faint praise). It is also immense.

I have mentioned before, the Cabaret Theater is a great place to see a show. It’s intimate by today’s standards with excellent acoustics and sound. It’s perfect for comedy which is much more demanding of sound than a music act (seems anti-intuitive, doesn’t it?).

OK–back to Terry Fator. There’s no doubt he’s extremely talented. He’s a ventriloquist who does impressions. Most of his impressions are excellent. Few are less than very good.

Soon he’ll be performing in Las Vegas as Danny Gans’ replacement at the Mirage. Gans is also an impressionist and considered by many Las Vegas’ premiere house act. He may be the highest paid act you’ve never heard of! The bar is high.

What Terry Fator doesn’t have is a polished act. He has many 2-3 minute bits, but the transition from one to the other is mainly slow and nearly always disruptive. He is not helped by his use of canned music, which really locks in his ability to shift timing and gauge an audience.

There are moments of silence during Terry Fator’s act. That’s a no-no.

Fortunately for Terry the format of America’s Got Talent hid this problem. He never had to worry about transitions because he never got more than a few minutes!

If I had the choice to have no talent or no act, I’d choose the latter, because an act can be bought or developed. I suspect that’s what will happen here. There’s too much talent in Terry Fator to squander.