Criss Angels believes that you will too
BACKSTAGE
The enigmatic, temperamental illusionist realizes a longtime dream with 'Believe,' his show with Cirque du Soleil at Las Vegas' Luxor.
LAS VEGAS — CRISS ANGEL seemed at once exhausted and totally keyed up, happy but sad, frustrated yet full of characteristic bluster, and more than anything else, mad.
Minutes after the curtain had fallen on the debut performance last month of "Criss Angel: Believe," his Cirque du Soleil-produced multimedia magic extravaganza that is scheduled to run for the next 10 years at the Luxor Hotel & Casino, the magician settled into a sofa in his Olde English-meets-goth-decorated dressing room and tried to make sense of his jumble of emotions.
The show's "soft opening" had been intended to help fine-tune "Believe" in the buildup to its official unveiling on Halloween. And by rights it should have been the end of the rainbow for Angel, the fruition of a passion project for the rock-star-famous bad boy illusionist and master escape artist -- a celebrity-canoodling tabloid mainstay who also directs, co-produces and stars in the "street magic" series "Mindfreak" on A&E. But with the night's performance marred by technical glitches and the omission of two significant illusions, he felt it had not been all it could be. (Especially contrasted against Angel's 2007 press conference to announce "Believe," when he said it would redefine "what magic is and can be.")
"The audience was obviously entertained by it," he said, matter of factly. "They experienced something we're offering that no other show is offering. But from a technical standpoint, because of the way I am, a perfectionist. . .
"I think we've got a lot of work ahead of us," he said.
A slow-developing routine
BY ANGEL'S estimation, he spent 15 years prepping the show, innovating groundbreaking "demonstrations" (he never refers to his illusions as "magic tricks"), suffering setbacks and myriad sour deals before making good on his original idea. The highly technical show features a surrealistic mash-up of death-defying stunts, animatronic rabbits, dancers in macabre costumes, dizzying filmic special effects, aerial acrobatics and, of course, magic.
Not the kind of thing you'd necessarily associate with a guy who created his brand identity dangling, impaled by giant fishhooks from a helicopter; getting run over by a steamroller in a bed of broken glass; and surviving a detonated crate of C-4 explosive.
