The OTHER Carnival

By Tom Peotto

I never imagined my Saturday night could be so filled with carnage. Three feet away and four feet up from me, a woman onstage was about to expose her bare feet to a heap of broken glass. With a cold chill I realized that the MC, his face a ghoulish bone-white, was pointing in my direction.

“Sir! Choose a number between one and four,” he snarled.

“Uh—three?” I croaked, still wondering if it was I he was talking to.

“Very well!” he crowed. “One!” The maiden leaped upwards and, with a jingling crunch that was sickening to the ear, her bare feet stamped directly downwards on the mound of shards. A puff of silica dust wafted into the stage lights. “Two!” My pulse was pounding. I hadn’t paid to see a foot-mangling show. “And… three!” Triumphantly the Countess Vanessa displayed the soles of her feet to the audience—not a scratch! “You see that she retains both feet—and all eleven toes,” leered our host.

To those of you who don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, last Saturday (February 21) our Community Auditorium played host to one of today’s premier shock shows: Carnival Diablo, an all-Canadian cabaret of terror. Twelve years ago Scott McLelland inherited Canada’s largest traveling circus and sideshow from his grandfather Nicholas P. Lewchuk, Canada’s first Ukrainian magician. Aiming to recapture the sense of awe, wonder and dark mystery that the sideshow invoked in a simpler time—when baffled farmers crossed themselves each time they saw a particularly spectacular feat—he retooled the show with an eclectic mix of Victorian mummery (the age of spiritualism and séances), Gothic décor, and elements redolent of Rob Zombie. To top it all off, he created for himself a delightfully wicked stage persona: Nikolai Diablo.

“Yeah, yeah,” you’re mumbling, “Rob Zombie goes to the circus. Big deal.” I’ll tell you what the deal is—uh, I couldn’t really think of a way to finish that zinger. But Carnival Diablo promises you a spine-tingling sideshow, and baby does it deliver.

The stage is blanketed in drapes, props and the fanfare of a bygone era. An evil mannequin barks out the spiel (actually, this is the least effective part of the show; I hope they hire a temp to do the dummy’s job), twisted calliope music infiltrates your eardrums, and suddenly our fiendish MC has entered. With his wonderfully expressive makeup (which he wields with a practiced ease) the muy malo maestro sneers, leers, snarls and smirks through the prologue to the show. He begins with a game of Russian roulette involving some poor audience member, paper bags, his hands, and a 9-inch railroad spike (in case you think this is rigged, the Edmonton Journal reported a 2002 accident when Nikolai’s palm was perforated by a blade). With full audience participation he demonstrates his psychic prowess, plucking card numbers and other errata from the minds of his victims. In a séance—well, I don’t want to give everything away. And then, just to show you that you’re not in Penn-and-TellerLand anymore, he hammers a nail into his nose before commanding us to take a 20-minute intermission.

When we return, all Hell breaks loose. He unleashes his fiendish compatriots: Sin, a strongman who’s wrestled with the WWE, and Countess Vanessa, one of the world’s two female sword swallowers. We see Sin put barroom tough guys to shame by bending an iron bar in his teeth, unflinchingly absorbing the pain of darts flung into his back and a sandwich-sized animal trap triggered with his hand. He lights a torch with the sparks from his tongue. Where did the sparks come from? He was sitting in an electric chair at the time. Countess Vanessa, with the perseverance of the martyred saints, consumes crickets and worms (who were leaping all over the stage), lies on a bed of nails as a 35-lb cinderblock is cracked on her abdomen, dances on broken glass, and swallows (to the hilt!) a 24-inch blade. And don’t forget our host, who demonstrates his heritage as a third-generation carnie by drinking boiling water, consuming razorblades, and (in the grand finale) performing the age-old feat of eating, then spitting fire (we in the front row felt a flash of heat on our faces—from three feet away!)

You may be wondering what hot date I saw this show with. Well, I bought two front-row tickets at the beginning of February, so with that breathing space to work with, I managed to line up… my little brother. The illustrated dictionary people phoned and asked if they could use my photo for the definition of “dork.” But anyway, this I command of you, dear reader—if ever you see notice that Carnival Diablo and its motley crew of freaks are coming to town, run (don’t walk) to your nearest ticket purveyor as though Hell itself was on your heels! And if you’re an attractive lady, please take me with you.