Dead Man’s Carnival, a blazing burlesque

People juggled fire. They ate fire. They lit themselves on fire.

It happened at the Dead Man’s Carnival Saturday night at the Miramar Theatre, and that wasn’t all. A man lay down in a bath of broken glass. A woman reclined on a bed of nails and had a watermelon cut in half on her stomach. A woman dangled from the ceiling on two ribbons of cloth. A man juggled swords and sickles and balanced them on his chin. A singer made the audience scream filthy words in “appropriate” places in her song. A man stepped inside a giant steel hula hoop and whirled around the center of the theater. A pair of stripteasers took it off. We heard a song called Let’s Talk Dirty With The Animals and a story about crack-smoking zombies.

So Dead Man’s Carnival had something for everyone. The show, backed by a six-piece band featuring alto and baritone saxophones, rocked and gamboled through three edge-of-your-seat sets.

 

Throaty lead singer Sir Pinkerton emcee’d. He paced the show, too, starting slow and building a crescendo over three hours. Music, jazz- and blues-inspired and nightclub-smooth, filled the entire first act. The music worked best when paired with the performances. In the second set, the band backed a sort of acrobatic cat-burglar episode with a medley comprising The Pink Panther theme, Flight of the Bumblebee and an impeccable rendition of Yackety Sax.

Now, the show had its share of technical problems. Microphones cut in and out, and the band tended to swallow up the lyrics of the quieter songs. Sir Pinkerton operated the rudimentary lighting cues in plain sight, as the Miramar doesn’t have much in the way of a light & sound booth. And the intermissions, nominally 15 minutes, sprawled and left the audience meandering too long in the front hall.

But the performers covered every mechanical difficulty, every drop of a juggling pin or misstep on the tight rope, with smiles and well-timed wisecracks. Those on stage appeared to have as much fun as those in the audience, and their good humor was more than sufficient to see the show through. They had a blast, and so did I.