Who goes down when two Chairmen take on two Kings?

Elvis and Sinatra impersonators

 Ellen Fox

Newcity January 18, 1999

Is it the Amaretto stone sours, or am I really seeing double Elvises?

As I take another sip and take in my surroundings, it dawns on me that we're in the ideal spot for a face-off between two Elvis Presley impersonators and two Frank Sinatras. Faces nightclub, which leans like an aging floozy on the arm of Magnum's steakhouse, is itself a tacky resurrection of the former Rush Street Faces, once the Studio 54 of Chicago.

Even more fitting, our host tonight is none other than Johnny Vegas, who was cashing in on nostalgia way ahead of time by throwing seventies parties at Kaboom in the early nineties. At the start of the show, with a tiny diamond disco ball dangling between the large collar of his slippery gold shirt, Johnny takes the stage to hush the fiftyish crowd with expectation.

"Tonight is not a silly night, it's not a caricature night," he says with solemnity. "It's a respect night."

Ten minutes later, we're watching a Jim Carrey-jawed Elvis in a "Viva Las Vegas" jacket jerk his hips to the opening bars of "Blue Suede Shoes." A few more notes and the CD starts skipping, but, with an older Elvis' signature self-mockery, he bobs his head along to every catch and laughs, "It's the Tourette's Elvis."

But neither this nor the preceding act, a frequently off-key Sinatra heavy, could prepare us for just how "solid" the next contestant is. Kevin Cavanaugh looks little like the Chairman, but one recognizes in his voice that impossibly lyrical monotone, that light, hollow-chested growl in almost every note. It is indeed, as Johnny predicted, "eerie." Problem is, he looks - not ashamed to be here, exactly - but ashamed of us: his face is so sour it's sickly, as if, throughout his utterly moving renditions, we were making something thick and gray well up in the corners of his mouth. Then, I realize - that's Frank.

Last up is Johnny Thompson's virile, sideburned Elvis, who, clenching his buttocks in a white fringed jumpsuit, causes the dumpy old gal behind me to growl, "Nice moves." She tears herself away from chewing on her own thumbnail to reveal she actually saw the real Elvis live once - as have others here - with her St. Gregory's High School social group, the Deblos.

All four contestants take the stage for a final, ensemble version of "My Way." When the CD cuts out entirely, the boys sing on a capella. The crowd claps its wrinkled hands, as any self-consciousness or camp completely dissolves into sincerity.