Dancing with the Devil

By Christopher Winsor

Short of spending two weeks with a fruit booze cocktail in hand, you’d be amazed at how refreshing it is to watch somebody stick a steel hatpin through their eye. Or transform themselves into a human dartboard, eat razorblades, broken glass or suck down a glistening worm.

Club Med it ain’t. But an annual trip to the margins of performance- a short stay in a place like Carnival Diablo, for example – amounts to a vacation from the self-serving, single issue diatribes, bungled formal tinkerings and endless canonical revisions that make up so much of the theater scene.

Carnival Diablo, a mix of frontman showmanship and PG- rated sideshow acts, is currently holed up in the 3rd floor auditorium of the Latvian House on College st.

The show begins in the lobby, amid swirls of incense and flickering skull candles. This ambience, a blend of camp and carnival-noir, extends also to the main event.

Ringleader Scott McClelland, decked out in turn-of-the-century finery, but sporting darkened, goulish eyes, is a carnival pitchman par excelence. McClelland has a rich booming voice and a seasoned hucksters timing. As he leads us through the shows first half, which consists mainly of him inviting audience members up on stage and involving them in some quite astonishing feats- card tricks, levitating tables and the like – McClelland cleverly establishes the evening’s overall tone.

What makes Carnival Daiblo work, is the pomo, mock-serious sensibility that pervades it. Sure there is the stock-in-trade schtick – periodic warnings that “those members in the audience that cannot stand the sight of blood are encouraged to leave now”- but mostly, McClelland’s patter is intelligent and wry, full of anachronistic quips and musings on quantum physics and the fallacies of Victorian science.

Aside from his carnival barker and Amazing Kreskin bits, McClelland also drives a 3-inch nail up his nose, drinks boiling water and plays Russian Roulette with Nitric Acid – to say nothing of the others in the show’s second half.

The best indication of how we’re intended to take all of this stuff, however, comes in the evenings only sketch. After commenting philosophically on basic human greed, McClelland places a 2-dollar bill in the middle of a leg-hold trap, he and strongman Morgan Spencer Birch then do an absurd scene in which Birch is cajoled into reaching for the cash, with predictable results. It’s what you might expect to see on Saturday Night Live (considering how far that show has fallen), except that it is funny.

Or, take the bit where Birch appears bare-backed and proceeds to twist a balloon into the shape of a bunny. McClelland steps back five paces, orders Birch to place the bunny on his head, and then starts throwing darts at it. Blindfolded. I mean, that’s funny. It’s a bunny, for god’s sake! Except the dart’s are sticking in Birch’s back!

Somehow, the hokey setting (a dimly lit, small proscenium stage flanked by cheesy Victorian cloth posters), coupled with the polished performance and mordant wit, manage to keep the more disturbing acts – things like the Human Impaler – light.

In the end, Carnival Diablo is tongue-in-cheek fun. ( Or tongue-twisted-‘round-with-wire-and-used-to-lift-heavy-basket-of-rocks-fun. Take your pick) At the very least, remember that a change is as good as a rest.