Things that go bump on the stage

By Rebecca Caldwell

A modern-day merchant of the macabre takes his inspiration
from the Victorian era

It may be Halloween, but the mask of evil's getting so banal these days. The film industry is regurgitating movies like The Exorcist or slapping together sequels where the only real horror is how much you paid for the ticket. But when you just thought it was safe to go out, the genre of horror theatre is being reclaimed by taking it back a century.

Scott McClelland may look like your regular Queen Street regular - goatee, short spiky coif - but his alter- ego, Nikolai Diablo, promises an evening that is far from average at The Victorian Horror, presented by Carnival Diablo tonight at Lee's Palace. The two-hour foray into the paranormal features some old- fashioned parlour tricks to be sure, but also a giant who acts as a human dartboard, the Lurid bug-eating Christine who washes down her crickets with ground glass and a finale involving the swallowing of a neon sword.

"We are performing a real Victorian horror show, sensibility-wise. There were no horror shows in the period, but it was a time when science and religion were clashing and spiritualism and seances became big," says McClelland. "We go into mystical, good vaudeville theatre interspersed with sideshow pieces. It's not some screwed-up human being on stage, doing terrible things to their body."

His last remark is a nod to the world of Jim Rose, whom McClelland calls "the Jerry Springer" of sideshow. Rose's act when he toured with Lollapalooza in 1994 included a stomach-churning display in which bile was pumped out of a performer and then offered to the audience.

Unlike the American sideshow tradition, which presents people with physical defects to be stared at or one- act wonders, Carnival Diablo claims a more legitimate theatrical ancestry.

"There's a type of theatre called Grand Guignol, which was a morality play with a lot of gore, and my grandfather used to perform Grand-Guignol theatrics and melodramas on stage, and I thought that my show should play a lot truer to what my grandfathers ideals were."

While a show featuring a woman eating glass is bound to be a bit jagged, not many hucksters can drop references to Grand Guignol. But McClelland has carnival life in his blood. His grandfather was "Prof." Nicholas Lewchuk, the owner of the largest travelling sideshow in Canada, who brought his vaudeville acts to early 20th-century Saskatchewan.

McClelland, whose mother Sonia trained lions and monkeys, remembers one particularly formitive family Christmas. "My grandfather said, 'I have something to show you', and he took out of his pocket a long chemical vial that had an old cork on it. He uncorked it and rolled out a surgical needle. And he took his old pocket handkerchief, cleaned it off, placed it at the base of his nose and began to push, and push and push until it hit the back of his spinal column," said McClelland. "And then he slowly pulled it out, wiped it off with his handkerchief and gave it to me and said 'now you try'. I was 14. 'Merry Christmas!'"

"I, of course, did not try it, but I knew there was going to be a day when I would."

And he has - even the most stoic audiences of The Ultimate Side Show will likely squirm when they see Nikolai pound a spike through his nose.

McClelland first impressed his grandfather as a 12-year-old with his deft slight of hand at the Cups and Balls trick (where a ball mysteriously moves it position from underneath one cup to another). At 13, he was already spending his summers performing across the country in "Professor Crookshank's Travelling Medicine Show." With a mix of magic, vaudeville and comedy, he became one of the longest running performers at the Calgary Stampede. In the early 1990's, he took the show on the road.

Now 36, McClelland has about a 160 gigs a year and travels from coast to coast in his black bus with its two copper skulls. Halloween is, naturally, the high season - it means 18-hour days rehearsing and performing for YTV and Much Music.

He does worry about the future of the genre, though. While there are circus schools where students can learn to swing on the trapeze, there are no hallowed halls where you can learn to lie on a bed of nails with a 250-pound man standing on your stomach. In auditions that have drawn hundreds of amateurs and thrill seekers, McClelland has only come across two trained performers, and usually has to initiate his talent pool into the dark arts himself. But if the performers are dwindling, the public appetite for campy horror with a dash of mysticism is not.

"The bottom line is that people like to be scared, but safe in their seats. And our show is like seeing Rocky Horror live."