Rosenblum Twins, Las Vegas Sun, August 15, 2003

Columnist Lisa Ferguson: Twins ready to double your comedy fun Lisa Ferguson Friday, Aug. 15, 2003 | 8:37 a.m. Pop quiz: Name a stand-up comedy team composed of identical-twin sisters. Stumped? That doesn't surprise Sheri and Stasea Rosenblum, whose fledgling comedy act fits the bill. The duo -- who finish their weeklong Las Vegas debut Sunday at Riviera Comedy Club -- know their shtick is breaking some ground. "There are really not many other women-twin comics," Sheri says. "I actually have never seen another set." The Rosenblum Twins, as they call themselves, are twentysomething California girls who were born in Los Angeles and bred in Los Altos Hills, in the Silicon Valley. They stepped into stand-up comedy nearly four years ago, after spending the bulk of their college years majoring in business at San Diego State University. "We started clubs on campus, spoke a lot," older-sister Sheri (who had a three-minute head start in the world over Stasea) explained during a recent call from Los Angeles. Performing for crowds "really came naturally for us," Stasea adds. In 1999 the two served as hosts of a film festival in Los Angeles. That's where a representative from The Improv comedy club spotted the sisters' silly streaks. "I hit my sister over the head with a microphone as a joke and everyone laughed," Stasea recalls. The club rep later remarked, " 'You guys are great stand-up comics,' and we said, 'No, we're not stand-up comics.' " Or were they? "People just started laughing," Stasea says of the film-festival audience, "and I remembered them laughing without us trying to be funny. So, we figured, maybe if we tried to be funny, we could possibly" fashion a comedy career "if we really worked on it and honed our comic skills." After all, the two had already wet their show-business feet, having played a pair of gambling twins in the 1996 cult-classic flick "Swingers." "It was a very exciting experience," Stasea recalls of working on the film that lent a hand to pop culture's retro renaissance of recent years. "It was the first time for us on camera, and how lucky we were to be a part of such a memorable movie." That year, the sisters moved to New York to study acting. In February 1999 they created, produced and starred in "Seeing Double," a comedy about -- what else? -- identical twins who lead opposite lives. The play, which co-starred New York Giants running back and real-life twin Tiki Barber, enjoyed a four-week run off-Broadway. "So we had already been onstage doing comedy theater, but not stand-up," Stasea explains. After heading back to the West Coast in '99, the women went to work on their comedy act, performing during open-mike nights at L.A.-area clubs. These days they play a couple of gigs each week at clubs in Southern California, though they'd like to start hitting the road for performances. "We talk about being twins," Stasea explains of their material. "We talk about growing up as twins," and pay homage to their comedy idols, Abbott & Costello, with a "Who's On First"-inspired bit about twin dating. "We've never been a single person. We don't know what the world's like without the other twin," Sheri says. Occasionally onstage the sisters trot out The Boobie Twins, a pair of air-head characters who are the antithesis of the real Rosenblums. "We've been developing them for a few years, so it's kind of fun to work on them," Stasea says. For the most part, she says, audiences find the sisters "adorable and cute ... and they love the twin aspect. Everyone has a twin in their family, or they know of a twin, or they've always wanted to be a twin ... So we have people across the board relate to the whole twinship of life." Oddly enough for the sisters -- who also live together and often finish each other's sentences -- nailing their collective comedic timing can prove challenging. "It really depends on the night," Stasea says. Adds Sheri: "We've just been doing this together so long ..." "That we really are more in tune with each other than most people," Stasea interjects. "But it's taken rehearsal, too," Sheri concludes. "A lot of rehearsal." The Rosenblum Twins acknowledge they have more work to do in terms of cementing their career. They are anxious for Hollywood to look beyond their matching faces and appreciate their comedic skills. Among their "fortes" is interviewing celebrities in tandem on the red carpet -- a style they've dubbed "twins-on-the-street" -- which they did a few years ago on VH1 and, earlier this year, Playboy TV. They're certain such a Q-and-A segment would work well on any of the late-night talk shows -- all they need is a taker. Jay? Conan? Dave? In the meantime the sisters are in talks with television producers about turning "Seeing Double" into a sitcom. "We've done a lot of work in the business, we just haven't had our 'breaking show,' " Stasea says. "We're banking on our talent and we want to make sure that's known," she says, explaining it's not unusual for outsiders to "get caught up in the gimmick of twins versus the talented part of the comedy duo, of who we really are." Out for laughs The Green Room Comedy Corner failed to get the green light at Santa Fe Station and has closed. The club took up residence in the casino's lounge earlier this summer. Station Casinos' entertainment reps offered no specific reason for the shuttering, but say the comedy-club concept may be revisited at the property in the future. "Last Comic Standing" winner Dat Phan continues his performances Mondays through Sept. 1, at The Improv at Harrah's. Next week's lineup also features ANT, who participated in the NBC reality series' West Coast semi-finals competition (though he failed to make the final cut to appear as a comic contestant on the show) and headliner Ralph Harris. Rick Overton has appeared on screens big -- "Eight Legged Freaks," "EDtv," "Mrs. Doubtfire," "Groundhog Day," "Beverly Hills Cop" -- and small -- "NYPD Blue," "JAG," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Seinfeld," "Married With Children," "ER." See him tackle the comedy-club stage Sept. 1 though Sept. 7 at Catch a Rising Star at Excalibur.