Here’s a bit of Vegas entertainment trivia to impress your friends: Who was the first headliner to reopen on the Strip after the shutdown of 2020? The answer is Piff the Magic Dragon at the Flamingo. The illusionist and comedian has been starring at the legendary center-Strip property for six years now and just signed on for three more years, continuing the significant growth of the show that moved out of the intimate cabaret space and into the larger Flamingo Showroom last fall. It’s one of the rare Vegas productions that expanded over the last two years, and it only takes a couple minutes of the performance to understand why Piff is thriving.

What was it like to move the show into the big room at the Flamingo last year?

For the last couple of years, we’d been touring the show in different venues with anywhere from 500 to 2,000 or 3,000 people in the audience. So, this was a pretty simple move and transition for us. The great thing is now we can do all this stuff we’ve been wanting to do so long in Las Vegas, bigger tricks, bigger routines. It’s a blank canvas.

Although it was challenging, to say the least, to keep it going last year and earlier this year, what did you learn from this experience that has helped you evolve the show?

It took about three months to really find our feet in this room, but then after that it felt like home. We did 50 people for a long time, three months I think, which was bananas. But it was good to just the run the show, to keep doing it and keep figuring things out, and we developed a lot of material during that time so when audiences did come back, we’d had the flight time already.

And doing what you’ve always done, uniquely combining comedy and magic, ended up being a real feel-good experience for audiences returning to Las Vegas for the first time in a long time.

Considering it’s a grumpy dragon onstage, it’s still a feel-good show and everyone comes out of there having laughed for an hour and a half and had a really good time. It’s still what people need, to laugh and enjoy themselves and get out there and have fun. And maybe they are a little grumpy after the last year or so, so they can relate. It’s like, “I finally understand how he feels.”

There’s so much new stuff in the show. Is there any element that stands out that you really love right now?

The show is all new. We do a trick now with 25 pounds of lemon-lime Jell-O, and that took awhile to get right, but it’s a lot of fun for me. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of, but with the whole show being new, audiences are just loving it. But we do have a $500 a week Jell-O budget, I think, and I’m getting sick of the stuff because I eat the leftovers.

You kept busy doing some virtual shows and TV gigs, and now that you’re back, I’m sure you have plans to tour again soon. Where is your focus heading into the new year?

We really don’t have time for stuff like (virtual shows) now and all our time and energy is going into the Vegas show and making it the best we can. I just changed one of the pieces and spent a week working on that, and it’s really about investing in what we do in Vegas performing live. I’ve been out on the road a couple times but it’s still a strange time for that. I think next year we’ll do something like 46 weeks in Vegas, and that suits us just fine. We’ve transitioned to being much more in Vegas now, which I love.

Flamingo, 800.745.3000 Ticketmaster

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