By Nick Buglione
They've come to see illusionist Criss Angel perform one of his last Mindfreak shows at the 150-seat venue, located in the depths of the World Wrestling Entertainment's restaurant on 43rd Street and Broadway. After 600 performances, the East Meadow resident and his five-man cast have been packing them in and are going to be moving to a bigger house.
Angel's popularity has grown almost exponentially since the daredevil staged three very public death-defying stunts this past year.
Last February he broke a world record for body suspension before a Times Square crowd of 75,000, as he hung from eight fishhooks for five hours and forty minutes. During his own television special that aired on ABC Family in October, he climbed a 200-foot water tower, with no safety net, and walked 30 feet on two, two-inch beams.
Perhaps most notable, though, was the 24 hours he spent submerged and shackled underwater outside the World Underground Theatre last August, with only a thin tube supplying oxygen. It landed Angel on the pages of every major daily newspaper in New York, and his escape from the watery cell was even broadcast live on "Good Morning America."
"We saw one of his specials, and I fell in love with it," said Denise Gross, a Bronx resident who came into Manhattan to see Mindfreak. "I wanted to come and see him in person."
The buzz had reached others who turned out for the show as well. "I heard about a competition between him and David Blaine, doing a contest," said Mitchell Quesada. "I never had seen him before."
Angel's Mindfreak is not your garden variety, rabbit-out-of-the-hat magic show. It's an amalgam of music, comedy, performance art and illusion, complete with characters dressed in anomalous costumes.
"I wanted to create a show in an environment to present an art form in a way that it would appeal to a new audience," said Angel, who speaks little during his performances, but spoke at length with the Herald after a recent one. "But still hold and bridge the gap of magic's traditional audience."
Dressed in gothic garb, the dark-eyed, dark-haired Angel usually has audiences in the palm of his hand during the 70-minute show.
From the flames of fire he turns into flying doves, to the presumably unwitting audience member he levitates off the stage, Angel infuses traditional tricks of the trade with his own style in Mindfreak.
"My influences came from a lot of things outside of magic, and I wanted to present it in a way that hopefully, one day, magic would gain the respect that cinema does and music does," he said.
The show does have a bit of a macabre side; in one instance, Angel takes five razor blades into his mouth at once, throws in a small ball of thread and washes it around with a gulp of water. After some oral manipulation, the magician pulls each neatly strung razor blade out, one by one.
"I try to take calculated risks," said Angel, who wouldn't discuss his age, but is 34 according to other published reports. "I'm not one who's crazy, who will just do something without doing my homework and without really conditioning my body and my mind, and understanding what I'm going up against.
"Every night I put five razor blades in my mouth. If I swallowed one of those or didn't handle it properly, forget about it. It's over."
In a somewhat gruesome demonstration of mind-over-matter, an expressionless Angel prods a long needle through his arm, breaking the skin and drawing blood.
"Essentially, your body is a slave to your mind," Angel said. "When I have a cavity filled, I don't sit there and get Novacain. I sit there and get a cavity filled."
Though his act might seem masochistic and brooding, Angel's really a pussycat. He takes the time to warmly greet and sign autographs for each member of the audience after every show, and even solicits donations for the Make A Wish Foundation.
"What I do doesn't compare at all to what some of these kids go through," he said. "I see what these kids go through and how they have a smile on their face. To me that's real magic; what I do, it pales in comparison."
He's remained quite grounded despite his success, and hasn't lost touch with his Long Island roots.
Born Christopher Sarantakos in Elmont, the youngest of three siblings, Angel moved to East Meadow when he was in elementary school.
While he's wary about revealing too much of his private life, he did say that he and several family members still live in East Meadow. His offices are here too.
Growing up, Angel first developed an affinity for music. "I've been a musician longer, actually. I got into music when I was 6," he said. "I studied drums and percussions for many years."
At around that same age, Angel learned his very card trick from his aunt, the first of many more tricks to come.
"I was kind of fascinated with magic and being able to do something that an adult doesn't understand. So at 10 or 11 years old, I got more involved in that."
By the time he was 13, Angel was performing in bars and any other place that would let him. "I was obsessed with it, I still am," he said of being on stage. "I always wanted to have an audience. Whether I got paid or didn't get paid was never the issue; it was about performing."
Outside of Houdini, though, Angel never looked up to any other magicians growing up, viewing their acts as hokey and old-fashioned.
"Since Houdini died, magic has never really had somebody that would be able to bring the art form in the day and age that we live in, utilizing technology and presentation, contemporary styles."
Angel pointed out that he is just as unimpressed with today's illusionists, David Blaine in particular.
"I really don't think we're in the same league," Angel said. "My demonstrations are much more provocative; they're things that people would never consider doing."
He's been hounding Blaine for a challenge for quite some time, but no dice so far. "I had publicly challenged him many, many times and he's ignored it," he said.
Although a showdown did appear imminent at one point, Angel hasn't heard from Blaine since. "I contacted his camp on two occasions, and he's just blabbing his mouth; he doesn't want to back it up. His biggest fear is me."
In the meantime, Angel has more television specials in the works and is planning a tour in February. He's also revamping Mindfreak, which closes at the World Underground Theatre on Jan. 6.
"I'm going to be blowing up the show. It will still be Mindfreak, but it will have major, major illusions involved in it. More creatures and my live band," he said. "The next show is going to have things that nobody's ever seen before."
