By Jack Houston
Four Queens 7 p.m. Tues.-Sat. starting at $14.95 plus tax and fee. 702.387.5175
A retiree with a $100 bill, a psychiatric nurse and a front-row priest aren’t just audience members at Mike Hammer Comedy Magic, they’re part of a whirling dervish performance that leaves you wondering how one man can operate so quickly. Part magician and part comedian, Hammer takes audience interaction to the limit. By the time we get to playing Russian roulette with staple guns, we’ve met John, Rhonda and Jim, a whole family from Maine and some outspoken Alaskan tourists, who would just about derail any other show but wind up as the perfect target practice for Hammer’s quick wit.
In between his wisecracks are the illusions, which find Hammer swallowing razor blades (verified by nurse Rhonda) before stringing them together inside his mouth or making retiree John’s $100 bill disappear and reappear inside an orange.
And then there are the staple guns. Three empty guns and one loaded one are tested against a board to prove their legitimacy and stuffed in a pillowcase, after which Hammer pulls them out one by one and unloads them against his carotid artery. While Hammer obviously survives, the mystifying part is how he tops that illusion with an even more memorable one, inside the so-called Pick Pocket Booth of Solitude.
