Leslie Gray Streeter

Postcards from the Strip: He am, he cried...but not really.

"You WILL believe Jay White is Neil Diamond!" screams the home page for Jay White, who for the past several years has made a living invoking the movement, exagerated hand movements and the sparkly, spangly stage shirts of Neil Diamond.

I don't quite believe White is the real thing, mostly because he's about 25 years younger, has a larger nose and is playing nightly in the Riviera Hotel's Le Bistro Theater, a cabaret room that's probably smaller than the real Neil's bathroom.

Besides that, I gotta tell you - he's really good. Scary good.

Because it's not just that White's got Diamond's stage shtick and hair down - he's got his voice, both singing and speaking. I'm not sure how a guy who looks like Neil Diamond also inherited his singing voice, unless they're separated at birth or the result of some top secret government experiment.

I sincerely hope that our government has more to do than run DNA experiments on treasured pop icons. But I make no assumptions.

White's show begins with a video of the history of the real Neil's career, which I like, because White's not so caught up in the moment that it seems he thinks he is Neil. I've seen that before with other shows, and it's incredibly creepy. An announcer explains that Jay is about to reenact Neil's July 4, 1976, performance celebrating the nation's Bicentennial.

Over the next hour (and three equally splendid fancy costumes) Diamond Jay does all the classics - "Cracklin' Rosie," a sweet "You Are My Sunshine/Song Sung Blue" medley, the heartbreaking cheese of "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" and a fun "Sweet Caroline" sing-along, during which he did one of those usually tiresome "This side of the audience versus the other side of the audience" games.

But it wasn't tiresome - it was fun, mostly because White really connected with the crowd, and seemed like he was personally invested in whether the elderly couple on the right side or the thirty-something mom and her 8-year-old daughter on the left sang louder. The real Neil has that kind of connection, too, so I think that's why it works.

It was funny when he asked during "Caroline" if anyone who wasn't around in the '60s knew that song. Anyone who's been to a bawdy piano bar knows that song, although I must ask Jay about opting to sing "Woah woah woah" during the chorus rather than the culturally accepted "Ba ba baaaa." I must know.

The high point was the encore of "America," which ended with the dropping of a huge American flag behind his head. I'm pretty sure everyone knew that was coming. But they cheered like it was a huge surprise. I did, too. I know. I'm pathetic.

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