A regular Carnival Cinema column of showbiz life musings by Captain Frodo –
On the way of the Showman: ‘End Times’
By Captain Frodo
November 2018
I’m lying in bed in a hotel room. Alone. Again. I can’t sleep. It’s real early. Mind is racing. I’m on tour with an ex-cop turned mindreader. Its early November and autumn rains fly sideways past the yellow street light outside my window.
There’s an enormous beech tree in the parking lot outside. I didn’t notice it when we arrived last night. It was dark. Which, in Norway at this time of the year only, means we arrived after three o clock in the afternoon.
The tree is on fire with Autumn’s full spectrum of colour. It must be twenty-five meters tall. The shape of the crown is perfect in the classic outline a freestanding beech gets.
“Spectacular,” I think. Then swing my feet out of bed and head down for breakfast.
Falling in love and marrying an Australian girl means having family spread as far apart as earth makes it possible. For my little girl to see grandma and grandpa in Norway we need to take intercontinental flights. And paying for them. I didn’t think about that when I fell for her. At that point, I was only thinking of one thing and it wasn’t how far away my parents lived. She looked great on mySpace. Anyway, I needed to come up with a plan. Being a showman there’s only one Way.
Lets turn back time:
April 2013
My daughter was nine months old when she came to Norway the first time. We stayed with my Mother, Father, Sister and her family, for five months. During that time I heard there was a new face on the Haugesund showbiz scene. (It had been pretty much empty since I left it in 1995;-) His name was (and still is) Vidar Hansen and he was a policeman. That is, he’d been a policeman for fourteen years but had recently taken a leave of absence to pursue a career as a mentalist and human lie detector.
I watched him work and really liked it. He really looked like a cop, and not at all like a showman and that gave his feats of mentalism an air of effortless believability. His background was a mentalists wet dream. Genuine deep experience in the field of police investigations. Every mentalist worth his salt claims to have worked with the police, the FBI, or any other clandestine organization. Even if they, in reality, have only worked for them, once, as entertainment for a Christmas party. (I have worked for the Freemasons, thrice. Just saying)
Flash forward:
November 2018
I flew from Las Vegas to Haugesund with my daughter, leaving my wife to sample the fruits of sin city alone for a week. That week I’m juggling jet lag, a six-year-old, rehearsals, act creation, and media appointments. Luckily I had managed to get my daughter a spot in her cousins class. She was in a Way an exchange student, from the Steiner school in Vegas to the Steiner school where I spent 14 years of life. She loved the immersion in Norwegian.
I think growing up bilingual, knowing a language spoken by about five million people a world away, the only people she ever hears speaking that language loves her. In her mind, Norwegian is the language of love.
Vidar is straight as they come. Me, not quite. It’s a good mix. A straight man and a gag man. (I’m the gag man.) I’m a sword swallower so I have a well-developed gag reflex.
I wear the outfit of a mind reader. A red shiny turban, big and balmy with a huge white feather and a mink skull at the front. When I stand next to the Cop I look like the mind reader and he looks like the work for dole man.
It’s so easy to make folks laugh when you’re working someone who is a high-status body language expert with medals for being the cop that arresting the most criminals in all of Norway in one year.
One week after landing I have to leave my girl behind with my Norwegian family. It was a worse experience for me than her. I have to struggle to hold back tears as I drop her off at school. She runs straight into the classroom like its no big deal. She grabs a box of beeswax crayons and gets right to work. I watch her through the window for a second, clench my teeth. Then the Cop and I hit the mountain roads of Norway. I haven’t toured here since I was performing as Santini Jr in my dads magic show. The memories are triggered by the imposingly majestic nature of the wind beaten west coast.
The most memorable of our gigs is in a tiny hamlet deep in the heart of the fjordland. After three hours drive and two short ferry trips we arrive. The venue looks like something out of a David Lynch movie. An old spinnery surrounded by mountains, steep and high waterfalls splashing down forming a river that no doubt had a waterwheel in the olden days. By the time we’ve unloaded the car the dark is immediate and complete.
The room is the size and shape of a living room. It’s got no stage. It smells of tar and has a dark natural slate floor. There are just a dozen chairs set out in a semi-circle.
The Cop and I go upstairs to eat the food the organizer’s wife has made for us. A gaggle of young girls are having a dance class in the upstairs room. They get a break just as we start digging into the box of lovely homemade sandwiches and bowl of fruit. The girls pass through our room. They stop and there’s a real, “You’re not from around here,” look on their faces. Then one says “Can I have one of your bananas?”
“Sure,” I say. The rest also wanted fruit. They take it all. The last of them, who, like the Cop and I, didn’t get any fruit eyes off a salami sandwich. Then she shrugs and leaves.
Showtime comes around and in the last five minutes, eleven souls wander in from the dark. The youngest is four years old. She got to come up on stage. I channelled my family show run with Zirkus Barnly in Denmark earlier this year.
The eleven get SO into the show. I mean, imagine a mindreading cop and a crazy ass rubberman swallowing swords, quite literally having arrived direct from Las Vegas to their micro-village. It’s powerful stuff.
After the show, we shake hands with every single one of them. One of them, an old man comes up with tears in his eyes and tells me of his time doing theater in his youth.
“It’s a long time ago. I’m 87 now,” he says. “It was the Way you brought them all in. We all trusted you. Thank you.”
As he left I wipe away tears for the second time in two days. Its been emotional.
11 people is all it takes. The Way worked real magic in that place.
We drive back to the hotel and go straight to bed.
I’m lying in bed in a hotel room. Alone. Again. I can’t sleep. Its real early. Mind is racing. What am I doing with my life?
A loud machine starts up outside. There’s a man with a chainsaw in a cherry picker and another man in a tractor. One is cutting the huge beech tree down. The other is attaching a really long blue rope to the huge branches and pulls them away. By the time I’ve had a shower there’s nothing left but a stump.
“Maybe I need to get a proper education I think.” Then I head down for breakfast.
Happy Holidays, may the gigs be plentiful and may you find love and fulfilment in your work and your fellow travellers.
See you all along the Way.
Captain Frodo Pic by John W McCormick Carnival Cinema
Master Showman, dad, husband.
Currently performing in Opium at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
(And Carnival Cinema Co-Founder)
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