"Freaks" come out at night at O'Shea's
Just in case life doesn’t have enough strange moments for you already, over at O’Shea’s casino on the Las Vegas Strip, it’s Freaky Friday .every day of the week --save Sundays and Mondays.
That’s all due to the show appearing there called “Freaks,” an offering produced by Anthony Cools, who has his own adult hypnosis show nightly at Paris Las Vegas. Appearing in the unlikely format of a six-artist sideshow done in Broadway style, “Freaks” offers the glass-swallowing, light-bulb chewing, glass-rolling, sword-swallowing and bed-of-nails-lying that one might expect from this kind of performance along with some acts consisting of objects like drills, hooks and the like that go where they have never gone before. “Freaks” is definitely not for the squeamish.
“It’s about tasking talented people that can do things other people can’t that people will pay a moderately priced ticket -- $29.95 – to come in and see,” says Cools, who himself hates pain and has to turn his head away when viewing some of the acts.
The cast includes Andrew Stanton, who performs such death-defying feats as a heart relocation (his), drilling through his own head, and a back-hook suspension that rises him to the ceiling by his own skin. His girlfriend, Kelvikta, appears in the show, and at one point he sticks a skewer through both of their biceps simultaneously. Call it true togetherness.
As for the other characters, there’s SleaZo the Clown (Aaron Zilch); Kelvikta the Blade (Kellie Christopher), who performs sword-swallowing and shoots darts from an unviewed, unmentionable part of her body; Brianna Belladonna, the glass-eater who actually consumes her wine glass when her date doesn’t show up, and 27-inch-tall Lil’ Miss Firefly, the Midget of Mischief and Mayhem, who rolls around in broken glass while wearing a tutu.
Then there’s “Freaks” writer-producer Bruce Block, a comedy-magician who was in the 2007 and 2008 seasons of NBC TV’s “America’s Got Talent,” which ventriloquist/impressionist Terry Fator, appearing at the Mirage, won in 2008. Block, who also played “Barnum” on Broadway, was adamant, as was Cools, about ensuring that everything is legitimate in the show and that no magic is used in “Freaks.” Block joins in the fun by playing a topless transvestite bearded-lady character in the show called the Church Lady and performs an irreverent tribute to Fator.
The show ends with the refrains of the song “People Are Strange” greeting the ears of the audience as they exit the theater. They’ll certainly have some weird tales of what they saw to tell the folks back home.
- by Bobbie Katz, Las Vegas Reporter for HelloMetro
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