Freak Out! CRISS ANGEL: MINDFREAK, WWF World Underground Theatre

November 24, 2001

By Brian Wendell Morton

(c) 2001

Who is Criss Angel?

Top neurosurgeon, race car driver, particle physicist, rock star and comic book hero, he's -- no wait. That's Buckaroo Banzai. Um, sorry.

"Master illusionist, escapologist, songwriter, vocalist, movement artist, visionary" Criss Angel opened his show, "Mindfreak," on November 20th in the World Underground Theatre, also known as the showroom beneath the World Wrestling Federation restaurant and store on Times Square. Many may remember Angel from his appearance on the Discovery Channel's "Science of Magic" special where he performed a "Metamorphosis" illusion at a speed rivaling, if not surpassing that of the Pendragons', using flash cannons instead of a drape.

It's almost too easy to miss the advertisement for the show in the new glitz of Times Square, what with the construction on the corner of 42nd St. and Broadway, the visual noise of neon from around the corner at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum and the constant stream of gawkers who hit the square and stand watching the NBC Jumbotron and the people queueing up for cheap theater tickets across the street at the TKTS island. And there's also the venue, the WWF store, which is festooned in the restrained and tasteful style for which all of its productions are known and revered.

So, if you can get past all that and find the poster in the small window next to the steel door that serves as the show's entrance, there's a chance you could see the show. Oh -- that is, if the clueless WWF store employees manage to direct you to the box office, hidden around the corner at a little ticket window on 43rd.

Tickets for the show run between $15 for back-of-the-room "bleecher" seats (I swear -- that's how it's spelled on the tickets) to $55 "VIP" seats at round cabaret-style tables down near the front of the stage. Despite claims that the audience "surrounds that action on all sides," there are severe limitations to the room that are magnified by the breathless billing. The stage is, in reality, surrounded only on three sides, as it sits in the crotch of an "L" shaped room, with the lighting board taking up a good amount of the space directly in front of the performers. The "back" of the stage is draped in a white sheet, from which many of the performers eventually emerge. And if you wind up getting the $15 bleacher seats, many next to the wall will not see at least half the show and others will not see much due to the large black pillars that, I'm guessing, keep the WWF store from crashing down into the seventh level of hell where it so righteously belongs.

The show begins where Angel, wrapped in leather and looking like a young Alice Cooper on steroids, comes out from behind the curtain, accompanied by a costumed cast of characters named "Illusia," (a woman, I'm guessing) in a green skintight-costume with a mask and elaborate tentacled headdress and "Usher," a large creature in a monk's robe with a mask that reminds one of "Lurch" from the Addams Family. The three proceed to do battle with a giant robot creature that fires bursts of smoke from its arms, until Angel vanishes and it is revealed that the Robot itself is Angel.

The show alternates between large illusions, such as the aforementioned transposition, and a series of parlor and close-up tricks, which were performed, true to the advertising, "in the faces" of the people sitting up by the stage in the VIP seats. The close-up tricks were shot through a camera mounted on the mask of another of the cast members, "Irus," and then projected on the white sheet hanging from the back of the stage. Although creative, the wrinkles in the sheet made for some headache-inducing viewing when the actor-mounted camera swiveled too fast or blocked the lighting, making Angel a dark silhouette and the magic an exercise in dark séance.

"Razor Blade" swallowing, a perfunctory variation of the Houdini needle-swallowing, was followed with a torn and restored bill borrowed from an audience member, and since Angel performs the trick without speaking, it made up the first of a number of what I call "Huh?" moments. He follows this with an interesting variation on Matt Schulien's "Card On The Wall," where the deck is hurled at a square plate of glass held by the Lurch-like "Usher" character.

All those who tore their hair out in agony, disgust and jealousy when David Blaine bit off the end of a quarter to the amazement of a bunch of characters on the street might as well call the Hair Club for Men right now, because Angel gets plenty of mileage out of the same stunt. Believe it or not, a roomful of laypeople let out audible gasps after the coin emerged from Angel's mouth after a lot of facial contortions. This segues into a bout of spoon-bending and finally a spoon mysteriously boogies about on the floor of the stage between Angel's hands.

In the most disappointing part of the show, Angel brought up a female volunteer from the audience for Slydini's "Paper Balls" -- except, after about two paper ball vanishes, Angel spread his hands in the silent query of "where'd they go?" The woman then pointed over her right shoulder to where "Usher" had been standing the entire time (a position he took by walking right by her at the start of the trick!) catching the balls before they hit the floor. BUSTED! Incredibly, Angel tried once more to vanish one, but the resulting lack of amazement on her part made him thank her and escort her back to her seat.

Angel next goes back to his Alice Cooper/Marilyn Manson of magic role with Harry Anderson's "Needle Through Arm," but unfortunately "Usher," walks directly across the audience's field of view, right at the strategic moment. The trick elicits the proper amount of screams and eye-covering from the front rows, and the back rows are treated to the sight of blood running down Angel's forearm via the projection in full bleeding color on the sheet behind him.

The Robot returns as Angel's nemesis, setting up a suspended straitjacket escape that leads directly into his sub-trunk, a touch I found nice and logical -- if you can't hold him in the jacket, stick him in a box! Instead of surrounding the trunk with flash pots, an effect that would leave most in the tight 150-seat room with permanent blindness, the cast brackets the box and simultaneously fires CO2 fire-extinguishers up in the air, and the effect is just as startling and speedy. You may have heard of the axiom, "method affects effect;" Criss Angel and his team have found the corollary: Small Room Affects Effect.

The finale is a suspension where an "audience member" is brought out, suspended in air and then slowly revolves around Angel from side to side. In such close quarters the illusion is breathtaking, and for once the music in the show accentuates the mystery instead of overriding it. After the woman departs the stage, Angel slides in behind the sheet and seconds later, he is (I'm guessing -- pillars blocked our view here) tied up in the crucifixion pose in which he is featured in all the show's advertising materials. Seconds later he emerged, leaving many of us to say, almost in unison, "Huh?"

This is an ambitious show for the size of the room. The close-up magic works at one level, but anyone further back than four rows is left to squint at the projections on the sheet at the back of the stage. The techno-music that is pumped at near ear-splitting volume drove out an older couple earlier in the day when we were checking out the entrance to the showroom, and the service was non-existent. The blurb for the show on Meir Yedid's Magic Times website promised "an exceptionally attractive staff" would be serving drinks. All I can say about that is that after our party was ignored for the better part of the show, I attempted to venture to the bar at the far side of the room. When stopped by the surly help, I asked, "How do I get to the bar?" only to be told, "You don't. You wait for a waitress." Welcome to New York, indeed.

When I had asked the box office staff how long the show was, they told me, "90 minutes." In reality, it clocked in at one hour and four minutes -- rather steep if you paid for those $55 VIP seats.

All in all Angel's not your everyday stage magician. He has an intriguing visual style to all his effects, he is carving out a modern niche in a world of magic where everyone is trying to be someone else (usually someone else already more famous and established at that) and his music isn't all that bad, if you can get them to turn it down to a more palateable level.

Criss Angel: MINDFREAK runs Mondays through Saturdays at 8pm, with a Friday late show at 10pm and matinees on Wednesdays at 3pm and Saturdays at 2pm and 5pm. The World Underground Theatre at WWF New York is at the corner of Broadway and 43rd St. at Times Square.