…and today the Los Angeles Times came out on my side, giving an extravagantly negative review to Criss Angel: Believe, “the gloomy, gothic muddle of a show that officially lurched into being on Halloween night like some patched-together Frankenstein’s monster.”

“Believe’s” framing device is that Angel accidentally receives a 6-million-volt jolt of electricity that fries off most of his face (a spectacle captured by an ever-present video camera). This propels him into deep hallucinatory space where our Siegfriedian hero must confront demons and angels that stalk his imagination.

These include a sinister troupe of dancing rabbits who, in one early sequence, tear Angel’s parboiled “corpse” apart and dance, exultantly hoisting his severed limbs and torso. In a later scenario Angel gets sliced in half with an electric blade, his oozing intestines visible through the smoky atmospherics.

Cirque du Soleil helps Angel with the theatrics, but it’s not much help:

[W]hile Cirque’s poetic imagery at its best can leave you rubbing your eyes and holding your breath, spectators here are more likely to find themselves stifling a yawn or wincing with embarrassment.

Read the whole thing here.