Houdini who?
Famed illusionist and television magic superstar Criss Angel made a play for the title of all-time master of escape in Times Square last night, wiggling his way out of a double strait jacket while dangling upside down four stories in the air, as a noose and 50 pounds of weights threatened to snap his neck.
Hundreds of people gathered around the scaffolding to watch Angel try to outdo Houdini’s famous feats of escape. He even tanunted the legend’s legacy a bit while firing up the crowd.
“Houdini never did this,” Angel said to the masses, “nor did anybody.”
The performance was a promotional stunt for his new show — Criss Angel BeLIEve, which debuts on Spike TV on Tuesday at 10 p.m.
After being strapped into two straitjackets, Angel’s crew pulled a noose around his neck and attached a weight to the end. He was then hoisted upside down on a scaffolding.
Audience members cheered him on and gasped in terror as Angel thrashed about and his face grew redder. But within two minutes, he had one arm free.
By about four minutes in he had both arms loose and was able to release the noose from his neck and throw the weight off to the side. He was back on the ground within 11 minutes.
“It’s a highly uncomfortable situation,” Angel said in a pre-show interview in his hotel room. “When I get done with this, it’s hard to walk because there’s that much strain. There’s a tremendous amount of pressure on my head.”
The event was supposed to take place in the late afternoon but was held up until 9:30 p.m. due to a piece of New York City’s own trickery, that of the permits department. After a crane malfunctioned on 57th Street on Monday, city officials reviewed a swath of permits and ended up delaying the show by hours, organizers said. But fans didn’t seem to mind.
“I was worried he wasn’t going to make it,” said Erin Kaya, 17, of Spokane, Wash., who was passing through Times Square with her mother and stopped to watch. “The part where he was struggling to get the 50 pounds off; he was spinning and his face started to get red.”
Last night’s show also felt like a homecoming for the Long Island-born performer, who got his start at a small theater on Broadway and 43rd Street in 2001 and used to perform tricks at Windows on the World and the Limelight.
“I took in this moment because I’ll never have this moment with these people in my entire life,” Angel said minutes after getting free. “To have all these people turn out, I just took a visual picture of that.”