"Believe" is the Harley Davidson of magic shows. There are motorcycles and then there are Harley Davidsons. Not that there is anything wrong with many of these motorcycles, but it’s the innovative style, performance, detail and quality that sets Harley Davidsons apart from the rest. Well, in comparison, there are magic shows and then there is “Believe”, the amazingly mind-blowing collaboration of super magician Criss Angel and Cirque Du Soleil. Performing in Las Vegas’ Luxor Hotel and Casino, Criss Angel’s magic spectacular is performed in a theater specifically built to handle the magnitude of such a show. With over forty illusions executed to perfection in each show, “Believe” has all the ingredients to make this an experience to remember for a lifetime – a larger than life set, energetic music, humor, explosions and fiery bursts, sexy assistants and an immensely charismatic magician who has the skill and ability to back up the hype as one of the world’s best performers of magic. Basically, a rock n roll magic show.
Known for his stardom on the popular “Mindfreak” series, Criss has taken on the challenge of live theater and is in the middle of a ten-year deal at Luxor. In fact, the fifth anniversary of “Believe” falls on Halloween, 2012. Without giving too much away, “Believe” (also designed and directed by Criss Angel) is one breathtaking illusion after another. At one point, Criss Angel dangles upside down, high above the audience as Harry Houdini’s mystifying straight jacket escape is recreated. Rapidly spinning in place, we watch from the edges of our seats to see if an escape will be made in record time. Moments of intensity in the show are frequent and when Criss disappears from the stage only to reappear in another part of the theater in a blink of an eye, it’s…well – Mindfreak! In “Believe” we are also treated to Criss’ unfathomable demonstrations of mentalism, sleight of hand and there is also plenty of audience participation, which always adds to the fun.
Las Vegas has plenty of shows to see but “Believe” should be on the top of everyone’s list. It is also a show that constantly evolves and can be entertaining time and time again.
I met with Criss after the show and, after talking with him for some time, realized the person I was sitting with was a perfectionist, an extremely hard worker and someone who has a deep, perpetual inner drive to continuously better his performance. I also found Criss Angel to be a genuine and down to earth person with the raw energy and excitement of a little kid. Yep, he’s the real deal.
Buzz – So as far as your own creativity and personal touch for “Believe”, is this show mostly your own conception?
Criss – This show itself it basically written, directed, designed by me as far as the magic and illusion goes. I completely designed it. We literally fabricated the stuff in my facility. I have a 60,000 square foot production facility. We manufacture the magic that you see on “Mind Freak” as well as the stuff that you see in “Believe”. Basically, it starts off in my mind and we’ll do some drawings and then some small, little prototypes and then once when we have it evolving to the point that we feel good about it, we’ll start building one. It goes through several phases – several months or even years – before it is developed enough so that it can be used in a practical way for ten shows a week - 46 weeks a year for a ten year deal.
Buzz – So you are the mind behind the show.
Criss - So the illusions you see, I create and design them and the show itself – I wrote the show so all the lines and all the jokes I wrote from beginning to end and directed everybody. Cirque also provided incredible support and creative minds that were able to do the projections, bring in the pyro and add the scenic elements and stuff like that. So it was kind of an evolution - the show is all about magic. There are more than 40 illusions in the show – more magic in the show than any other Las Vegas magic show and it all centers around giving people an experience that is unlike any other magic show – to revolutionize magic as far as awe and wonderment.
Buzz – Sounds like “Believe” is the show to see and based on what I saw, it is.
Criss - Cirque and I take it very seriously with the economy the way it is and people coming to Vegas and not having the disposable income they once had, they have a very important decision to make. They are not seeing two or three shows anymore, they’re choosing one show, and if they choose believe I want to make sure we deliver and the best promotion and marketing in this business as you know is word of mouth. People leave here and tell their friends and they come back. We’ve have people that have seen the show 70 or 80 times. We also have all kinds of fans from six years old to seventy-five years old. It’s really amazing the demographic. It’s really exciting and it’s a big room. It has 1,534 seats, unlike other shows in town that play in venues half the size. We’re very, very, very fortunate and I really attribute that to the great show that we have, and it’s not my show it’s really everybody’s show because without this amazing team, there would be no show. It takes an army to win a war not just one person, and I have the best army in the world.
Buzz – Do you as a magician go out and see other magic shows?
Criss – I know it’s out there, but I don’t spend a lot of time looking over my shoulder looking to see what others are doing because I try to lead the way, doing things that are innovative. A lot of the stuff that’s out there – not to pick out anybody in particular – but you go see that show and you can see seven other shows that do the same tricks. You know, have the box come out and we’re going to squish somebody that is small or have the box come out and slice people. For both me and Cirque Soleil, we have built our reputation on being able to deliver first class entertainment that’s provocative, that’s engaging, that’s exciting and that’s unique and that is the mantra that we have – and if someone else is doing it, we don’t want to do it. We have an advantage in the fact that the show is built right here and we’re not moving around from venue to venue. This show is here for ten years and maybe five more if we mutually agree to an additional five-year contract.
Buzz – You’ve single-handedly brought magic to a completely new type of audience that has now become a phenomenon, thanks to a platform such as “Mindfreak”.
Criss – Well, I think magic has been is a stagnant position and was just coasting along, not really keeping up with the times in pop culture, in music, in visual and so on, so I wanted to give it a kick in the ass and do something that I wanted to see. Years and years ago I really did not aspire to be a magician – I thought Houdini was fantastic and one of the greats in magic, but magic that was happening at the time just seemed to be kind of hokey. It was really cutting edge that had a mass appeal to a popular culture, so for me it was all about – as a fan – what do I want to see? How can I bring that to people? I think that success really resonated in “Mindfreak” and obviously in “Believe” it has that kind of a concept. If you watch “Mindfreak” a lot of those illusions are in different incarnations in this show, like the cutting in half which I did in “Mindfreak”. There are a lot of different pieces of magic that I did in “Mindfreak” that are in this show, so they are able to work on television and in live performance. I just think the whole nature of it is much more entertaining and more contemporary, if you will.
Buzz – Was that a big transition to go from TV to live performing?
Criss – Well, I’m a live performer first. I’ve been ding this since I was 11-years-old. I performed at kids’ parties and corporate events – all sorts of clubs in New York City, Webster Hall – all sorts of places. I really started to build a following and then television was something that I was involved in as a teenager and I was kind of able to work in both mediums and understood that just because something works in one medium doesn’t mean it will work in the other. I understood that when you work in television, you have to make engaging TV and that’s very different than live performance. When you’re in live performance you can’t do – we’ll television is a completely different thing. When your in television you’re able to use the cameras to zoom into the action, keeping it moving, upcutting so you don’t have to sit there and be bored watching the whole lead up to the effect.
Buzz – Sure. And the attention spans of younger viewers are different these days.
Criss – Right. Kids and audiences today are so overwhelmed by information with the Internet at their fingertips. They don’t have the attention span that they did 10, 20, 30 years ago. So when you create a TV show, it’s got to hold people’s attention. It’s got to be produced and created in a certain way where it connects and brings them into it and that approach is a very different approach than when you’re doing live performance because in live performance you can’t go to a close up shot – they’re the directors. So they’re watching the show from their perspective and you have to provide a show that’s going to keep moving and my goal is to make “Believe” a freight train. You’re on a fright train – a journey that’s going to be exciting, scary, dangerous and sexy. I try to take people and let them feel these different emotions and not kind of repeat the same thing so it’s funny as well. That’s a very different approach than in “Mindfreak” which is more serious.
Buzz – I have to ask you about that incident on the TV show “Phenomenon” when you called out that mentalist who claimed to communicate with the dead. Was that whole exchange scripted?
Criss – Oh, no. Absolutely not. That definitely was not scripted. I can’t remember his name offhand but he claimed to talk with the dead. I don’t have a problem with that if it’s for entertainment. I don’t have a problem with that - but when you prey upon the vulnerable and you try to go after people for financial gain, or you manipulate their emotions to get money from them, which is what these charlatans do, I have a real big problem with that. I just think that’s completely wrong. Houdini spent half his life disproving psychics and mediums who claimed to talk with the dead – he proved them wrong. Interestingly enough when Houdini passed away in 1926 on Halloween, he said to his wife – because he spent a good portion of his life debunking these people – he said to his wife, Bess, from his deathbed, “when I die there are going to be a lot of people coming out of the woodwork that are going to claim to have made contact with me, so I’m going to give you a secret word – a code – so that when they hold a séance you’ll know whether they are really talking to me or if they are frauds and charlatans.” And the word is “believe”. That’s why the show’s called “Believe”. So I feel pretty passionate about that.
Buzz – Wow, cool. I didn’t know that - a very apropos name for your show. There are sure a lot of TV psychics out there that are able to get family members to trust them.
Criss - To these people that claim to have these powers, I’ve offered a million dollars of my own money if someone can do something that can’t be explained or reproduced and James Randy, John Edwards, Sylvia Brown – that’s all bullshit. It’s all nonsense. It’s just tricks that a magician would use to be able to utilize the person, to gain information so that the way it appears is as though they know something. This most simple example is like discovery. You’re gonna go home and you’re gonna be in traffic, now there are a million cars and you’re never going to notice a specific car. But if you go out tomorrow and by a specific Nissan, the minute you buy that car your going to notice the same car everywhere because your awareness – your perspective – completely changes.
Buzz – That is so true. Happens every time.
Criss – Sure. So if you’re looking for information and I’m able to fill in little pieces in your mind that make sense, then you’re going to give me information by your body language, by your vocal responses - your gonna feed me with information just like how somebody dresses, how they conduct themselves – I’m gonna know what kind of personality and what kind of financial base they probably come from, etcetera. You become very aware and perceptive to these things so that you’re able to create a scenario that people buy into and as they buy into it, your getting more information from them. It’s called cold reading. That’s the name of the technique.
Buzz – So it’s like mentalism?
Criss – Well, mentalism is a category. Mentalism is basically more of a magician kind of word. Like I do mentalism. Now people that claim to have these beliefs, they’ll say they are clairvoyant or psychic – it’s all kind of the same thing, but I wouldn’t use those terms because I am an entertainer.
Buzz – What’s your favorite trick to perform?
Criss – I get asked that a lot and it’s really funny because we do over forty in “Believe”, but they’re all basically my children. So to pick one over the other is impossible. Each illusion is designed to evoke a different emotion so they’re designed differently to give the spectator a different feel. So to pick one over the other is very, very difficult, but some of them are much more challenging because the show is very physical to do, so sometimes on my body, it’s much more difficult. The straight jacket escape where I’m hanging above the audience and spinning then free falling to where I’m caught by my ankles is sometimes challenging. For me and the cast and the crew, we always go out there and give 110% because we’re very grateful to have such an amazing audience. We put in our best to give the best and I’ve never missed a show in my entire career.
Criss Angel is the most watched magician in history for a reason and “Believe” allows him to bring the magic right to your seat. Get ready to be bewildered and mystified in a highly intense magic show you will never forget!
“Believe” is performed eight times weekly. For more show information click here.
