You won’t see him frolic in the autumn mist. Not in a land called Honalee. Not anywhere. (Some mythical being immortalized in poem and song already cornered that shtick.) You might not even think he stands outs in a crowd—just another green (with bursts of red and gold), grumpy, scaly creature walking his Chihuahua on the Strip. And yet …
“There’s nothing women in Las Vegas love more than a magic dragon,” says John van der Put—Piff the Magic Dragon to you—as Angela Stabile, co-producer of his headliner gig at the Flamingo, can affirm. “He gets proposals all the time,” she says with a touch of amazement. Piff clarifies: “It’s the joy I exude.”
Perhaps it’s the joy of dyspepsia. At least onstage. Anyone who’s seen the London-born, dragon-costumed comedian/magician in Vegas venues, at tour stops and on America’s Got Talent—where he advanced to the season finale before being bumped from the competition—knows his personality is built on a foundation of dour, deadpan ’tude. He looks like he’d rather be anywhere else—and there’s nowhere else he wants to be.
“Here, hold him,” he tells an audience member as he hands over his Chihuahua sidekick, an 8-year-old trifle named Mr. Piffles, clad in its own dragon outfit. “If he gives you trouble, just punch him in the face.”
Over the course of his new hourlong showcase (which morphs into Piff’s Piffmas Piff-Tacular Dec. 21-30) he blends crowd riffing, throwaway zingers and audience-assisted magic into a truly weird entertainment brew: trying to toast bread with his dragon breath before a card turns up inside; twisting the old “I just flew in and boy, are my arms tired” joke into a metaroutine; introducing a mind-reading goldfish (nicknamed Criss Angelfish); moonwalking Mr. Piffles across the stage before announcing the pooch will escape from a straitjacket.
“This stuff kills in Honalee,” he quips.
Der Put was once a performer on cruise ships and at corporate events, gaining little traction, especially with his habit of toggling between sarcastic and sardonic. “I was doing a traditional act and people are like, ‘Why are you so grumpy; what is your problem?’” he says. “People called me the Eeyore of Magic. I got fired everywhere.”
Into this yawn of a journey, enter a lightning bolt of luck/genius. “One day I was going to a costume party and I said to my sister, ‘Do you have anything to wear?’ And she pulled out a dragon costume from under her bed. I didn’t ask any more questions. A friend said, ‘You should do this as part of your act, you can be Puff the Magic Dragon.’ I said, ‘No, I can be Piff the Magic Dragon.’ It was a perfect fit and everyone who fired me rehired me. And I was the same grumpy magician.”
Playing the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland in 2009, he added a cutie-patootie little nipper to the act, after he noticed a Chihuahua at one of the venues. “I thought the act needed a gimmick,” he recalls, and after inserting him into the shtick during one performance, he decided to make it permanent and got a rescue pooch he named Mr. Piffles, a serene, only vaguely perplexed-looking staple of the show to this day.
“He doesn’t do much and that’s a gift in and of itself,” he says. “I worked on material with him and he learned three or four tricks. Now, he’s one of the biggest members of the team—certainly the most charming.”
Together, they’re the strangest sight in Honalee. And that’s saying something.
Flamingo 8 p.m. Mon.-Wed. (dark through Dec. 13 & 16), $49.95-$69.95 plus tax and fee, 18+. 702.733.3333
