Friday, September 17, 2004 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

SHOW REVIEW: Amazing Johnathan

Still Crazy After All These Years: Amazing Johnathan's show never changes much, but it should be a priority for anyone with a sick sense of humor

While most Las Vegas magic shows play nice, The Amazing Johnathan has made a career out of the sick joke.

The audience "volunteer" has been different every night for more than three years. But never has one been treated well.

The recruit -- this night named Clark -- is pulled to the stage to have his $100 bill cut in half. But it's never "restored" as it is in most magic shows.

He huffs and puffs to blow up a balloon, which the "magician" onstage uses solely to cool himself with a big whoosh of air.

And when he is asked to reach into a bag to retrieve a deck of cards, The Amazing Johnathan pauses to ask the crowd, "Why would I put a rat in here? It would bite his hand. That's not funny."

But the thought of it sure is. While most Las Vegas magic shows play nice, Johnathan has found a thriving niche for the sick joke. His act combines 30 years of stage time with a parody of the standard-issue magic shows that dominated the Strip before him.

Johnathan is a big bully, torturing his ditzy stage assistant, Psychic Tanya (Penny Wiggins), before turning his profane attention to the audience draftee for the better part of 40 minutes.

But things come unhinged just as surely as the star can swig Windex or huff Drano. The audience roots on Tanya and her backstage conspirators as they witness the crumbling of the traditional magician who lords over his environment with unexplainable power.

Johnathan's show never changes much. But to see it enough to remember every joke, you'd probably have to be a Riviera usher.

You get the idea that as the act evolved, the one-time street performer would think of a new line to follow an existing one, then think of another line to follow that one. At one point I counted more than 15 laugh lines just from the simple business of making his poor volunteer pick a card from a deck.

One also suspects many of the gags date back to the mid-'70s, when the Michigan native first started honing his cruel humor on tourist crowds at San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf.

By June 1998, Comedy Central had popularized Johnathan's wildman stage persona enough for him to headline the Sahara. He settled into the Golden Nugget in June 2001, before spending the next year on the Strip at the Flamingo.

AJ, as his friends call him, bought a house in Henderson by the time his ship seemed to arrive early this year, via a return to the Nugget with a two-year deal and a guaranteed salary. But that deal exploded within weeks, causing Johnathan to move again -- this time to the Riviera -- and threaten to sue the Nugget (no litigation has been filed in District Court, but his stated intentions remain on his Web site).

His new showroom, shared with "An Evening at La Cage," makes it harder to play to the folks seated in the back of the long, narrow venue. And on this night, his amplified voice sounded flat and surprisingly subdued, something that could be chalked up to either a cold or the dynamic range of his clip-on microphone.

But the bedrock of the set remains the same. The first segment includes the "Sorry you had to see that" stapling and stabbing of the clueless Tanya, introduced as a stripper to whom Johnathan owes a huge debt.

Then comes the long ritual with the audience draftee, which includes a surreal "acid trip" and a dance session with Tanya. The segment now works in some new gags, including a contraption with mechanized hands flipping the bird to the audience. "It's Vegas. You gotta have a little production value," he explains.

But the real production number is "Bad Karate Theater," a kung-fu showdown between Johnathan and Tanya set to "Kill Bill" music and employing lethal floating objects such as toilet paper.

It helps perk up a third act that used to play mostly like a wind-down, and shows the fevered brain of The Amazing Johnathan hasn't calcified through steady work in Las Vegas.

The show should be a high priority for anyone who declares his sense of humor to be "sick." But consumers should think twice about the souvenir DVD (filmed at the Flamingo) if they're planning on a return trip, lest they end up reciting too much of the act along with the Riviera ushers.