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THE BEAUTY OF MAGIC Starring Hans Klok and Pamela Anderson

Planet Hollywood Hotel

Performance reviewed: Saturday June 2, 2007 - 7 pm

RATING: C-

SHOW REVIEW

This week, the talk continues to surround the new magic show that recently opened over at the Planet Hollywood. I'm not talking about the OTHER magicians...Not Nathan Burton (he's in the V theatre), or Steve Wyrick (he's in his very own theatre), or Jason Byrne (he's in the V show), but the blond-haired magician from Amsterdam that nobody in Vegas has heard of (until now), Hans Klok.

Actually most of the talk isn't about Klok, but rather, his shapely assistant Pamela Anderson, who replaced Carmine Electra just before the show opened, and who does about 10 minutes within the Hans Klok show.

If you go to this show expecting to see Pamela Anderson, I must warn you; you will have to sit through about an hour of magic tricks first, and then watch closely, because she is on the stage for less than 12 minutes (I am serious) and what she does is pretty unimpressive. Not that she's bad, mind you. It's just that she doesn't do anything worthy of the ridiculous sum of money they are paying her for this brief appearance.

Hans Klok is a likable enough guy, but you don't really get that from the show. In my interview with him in his dressing room a few days later, I saw that side of his personality, but in the show, all you get is a lot of facial changes, stares, and posing, often at the edge of the stage in front of a giant fan so that his blond hair flutters about. (I stood there myself and leaned into the fan, my hair looked like a cross between Marty Allen and Freddy Fender in a windstorm.)

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Before the show begins, you are struck by the sheer size of the massive theatre. This place is huge. 7,000 seats huge. I've seen a lot of music in this theatre, rock shows (Bob Dylan) and country (WIllie Nelson) and even the first production of "Phantom" in Vegas. The stage is about the size of two football fields, enough room to drive a dozen or more cars onto (something that has been done, but not in this show).

On either side of the stage are these humongous hands sticking up into the air, with Hans Klok in the palm of each hand. As a matter of fact from the time you enter the theatre, you are confronted with giant posters and billboards of Hans Klok. He's all over the place. Must make Steve Wyrick happy. After all, there are 4 magicians in the hotel, yet the only one with major face time is the Hans Klok show, mainly because Planet Hollywood chief honcho, Robert Earle, is throwing a lot of support at this show, to the detriment of the other magicians who are paying rent to be there.

The show began over an hour late. It was set to begin at 7 pm, and most of the crowd of 1,200 people (nearly 200 seats were sold at various discounted prices, and over 1,000 were given away) were seated at that time.

For whatever reason, it was after 8 pm when the lights finally dimmed and we all scurried off to our seats.

The show opens with 16 dancers performing some high stepping to loud music (much of the music is original), and after the dance number, which is longer than it needs to be, a familiar prop is wheeled out, and dry ice starts to steam up the stage.

As I make a mental note (seen that before) the expected magician appears in the illusion, (a fancy box on top of a big set of stairs) and instead of making eye contact with the audience at this critical moment, he poses, nods and quickly turns and runs off to the next box as it wheeled out.

I'm not going to run through the entire show, no need to. The purpose of a review, I have always felt, was not to show how much the reviewer remembers and recall it, but rather to convey the sense of feeling and the level of entertainment one can expect in a given show or film.

I must say, given the size of the show, and the amount of money that has been reportedly spent to create this show, it failed to live up to the hype.

Can it get better? Absolutely. But there's a lot that needs fixing, beginning with the selection of material.

Hans performs one box trick after another, it seems, and they all start to seem like the same trick. Maybe that's because in a lot of those cases, the ARE the same trick. Different color or size box, slight variation on the theme or music and lighting, a different girl, but most of what you see is Hans changing places with one of the girls. "Oops, he's not there, she is, and there's Hans over there..."

One would think that during one of the rehearsals, someone might have said something like, "Hey wait, I think we did that one already".

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And every single time that a girl is produced from some box, everyone in the audience seems to be leaning over and saying, "Is that Pam?"

Why oh why do we have to wait for an hour before she shows up? Why is she not produced up front in one of the myriad of box tricks that make up the bulk of this show?

And the big question; if you are paying her all this loot (I heard from reliable sources that she's getting a cool $3 million for 3 months of work) then why not give her more to do? Let's be honest here; nobody knows Hans Klok, but everyone knows Pamela Anderson. It's the only reason she was hired - to boost ticket sales. Audience members I spoke with afterward were disappointed that she didn't do more.

One of the many consultants and behind the scenes people said to me, "too many directors", referring to the rambling, often repetitive nature of the production. No one person seems to be in charge of the entire show. Hence, a disjointed show on many fronts.

There are also several set pieces within the show that fail to have a meaningful payoff. In one sequence, Hans stands in front of the little boy (the young Hans) and twists up a napkin into the form of a rose, then it changes into a real rose. Then he hands the rose to the little boy.

What is that about?

Note to Hans: not a good idea to give a red rose to a little boy. Better to produce the rose, and walk to the edge of the stage and present it to a lady in the audience. Just a thought.

There's a storyline about a little boy who dreams of growing up to be a magician, with an actor playing the little Hans, and an older man playing the father of the little boy, showing him tricks and encouraging him to learn magic. There are film clips projected on the walls of the theatre and on screens overhead. The production value is fantastic, music, sound and lights are excellent, the storyline is cute, if not always easy to interpret or follow.

It's what happens in between all that where Hans begins to look like any other large illusion show that's played on the Strip. The switching places illusion is presented several times, and even if Hans wants to deny that the show is repetitive, he is doing the same trick more than twice, because in the eyes of most audience members, when two people change places, the trick is over, and when two other people change places, they have seen that trick already.

I agree with the theory of magicians doing the classics, there's great merit in that. But unless one does them so much better than they have ever been done before, or unless there is something so compelling and different added to their presentation, one cannot realistically expect to get rave notices and praise. You earn respect as a performer in this town based on positive word of mouth. And that only comes from having a show that is solid, original entertainment from beginning to end.

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It's not too late for Hans Klok to get to that level. A re-vamping of the show content is necessary, and he must become more comfortable with the audience and add some well-written interaction. Bruce Villanch is credited with writing all the lines. What lines would that be? There are a couple of jokes, nothing of the knee-slapping variety, and the show could surely use a few big laughs to break up the stream of illusions that wheel out in rapid succession.

I hope the "big man" (as Klok often referred to the producer during our interview) has deep pockets, as this first run (90 days) will most definitely lose money, and the cost to re-open this very expensive show will be huge. If every available seat were sold for every scheduled performance, there is no way the revenue will come anywhere close to the production costs that have been spent already.

Hans wants to remain in Vegas "for a very long time". For that to happen, he needs to do an honest self-evaluation of the show and make the necessary changes to get this train back onto the track while there's still time. I personally feel the show is just not ready for Vegas. Not enough honest rehearsal, not enough attention to content and show flow. A show like this is so big, and has so many elements that have to come together for a success, I suspect that with all the turmoil with changing his magic assistant just before the show opened caused a lot of time to be wasted, and in the interest of getting the show open so they could begin to generate revenue, they opened without suitable rehearsal or planning time.

I sincerely wish him luck, and I truly hope they get things rolling in the right direction in time to create that all-important "positive buzz" for the show.

Interview with Hans Klok

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