"You're never so alive as when you're scared to death," says Todd Robbins during the course of Play Dead, his macabre entertainment now on tap at the Geffen Playhouse. Robbins, a charismatic magician/emcee who honed his craft in Coney Island carnie shows, sets out to frighten the audience to death -- when it isn't laughing itself silly.
Working on a stage that's heaped with artifacts and memento mori from bygone horror shows -- skulls, embalmed bodies, rusty murder weapons -- Robbins, clad in a white suit and red shirt & tie, tells one ghoulish story after another while performing his various stunts (one of which involves biting the head off a live rat). He also orchestrates the show's many sound and visual effects, sometimes plunging the theater into darkness, other times spraying the audience with fake blood or startling it with loud, eerie noises.
The theme behind all these weird happenings is the human's race's obsession with death. We all fear it, hate it, yet can't stop talking, thinking and even joking about it.
An illusionist with a gift of the gab, Robbins recreates the kind of spook shows that were popular on boardwalks and carnie fairgrounds in the 20s and 30s. That includes geeks, freaks, spiritualists and even audience participation. Robbins works the rubes over in slick, time-honored fashion, managing to fleece, frighten and amuse them for ninety unbroken minutes. As he confides at the end of the night, "I hope you've had an honestly false experience."
