Neal Santos
Two minutes into a phone call with the cast of Elephant Room and something is already on fire.
"I don't want you to worry," says Dennis Diamond. "But there is a very small fire in the theater. Daryl is rehearsing a bit for the show."
Diamond, with a dark mustache and yellow-tinted glasses, resembles a used-car salesman from the '80s. Daryl Hannah, with a black mustache and a head of frizzy Weird Al curls, looks like something awful from the '90s. And their comrade Louie Magic, sporting long blond hair and, yep, a mustache, is the spitting image of Joe Dirt.
For weeks now, Diamond, Hannah and Magic — whose real names are Steve Cuiffo, Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford, respectively — have been in character, prepping for their magic show at the Live Arts Festival. The performance, Diamond promises, will usher viewers into a "secret society" where "you will be rocked and amazed by the beauty of magic." For his part, Diamond is a mentalist, which means he claims to perform hypnosis, mind control and telepathy on viewers.
"It's the art of controlling somebody's attention," he explains.
When asked if his friends are annoyed with him being in character 24/7, he claims, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Suddenly, an alarm goes off on the other line. It's the fire again.
"Oh, Daryl!" screeches Diamond. "He has a massive wound ... I'm literally holding his face on with one hand."
Despite this, Diamond passes the phone to Hannah, who explains that he was trying to do pyrotechnics, but something went awry. Then he gets into his back story. He explains that he learned "therapy magic" and shamanism in an Arizona jail, where he was locked up for "nothing serious, just some DUIs."
Next time he attempts to do pyrotechnics, "I won't mix liquid nitrogen with the gunpowder," he says. "That was a mistake."
This blend of The Three Stooges, absurdism and fun-stache humor — as well as a few legitimate sleights of hand — is exactly what to expect from Elephant Room, a 75-minute performance that has somehow been deemed appropriate for children ages 10 and up.
Sobelle is a member of the demented, fantastic troupe Pig Iron Theater, and with Lyford he heads up the performance art collaboration "rainpan 43." The two are also Live Arts veterans?. The Washington Post described the Philly-based actors as "oddball" performers who make the audience "happy to be served banana slices on toothpicks while making believe they're tasting brains." The New York Times called them "crackpot inventors" who give "intricately nuanced comic performances." They're surprisingly decent magicians, too.
Indeed, weeks before our phone conversation, the three tricksters magically find me at a bar, though at that point I hadn't reached out to them at all. Somehow, they knew that I would be writing an article about them, despite the fact that I had learned as much myself only hours earlier.
They were all in character — even before they found me — and suavely made a few items disappear before a crowd. When asked how they knew who or where I was, Diamond said, "I don't know what you're talking about."
Then he started explaining his theories about the Bermuda Triangle — there is more than just one swirling in the world's waterways, apparently — and how performers are lost in it every year.
Here's to hoping there isn't one in the Delaware, and that these three stick around for a long, strange time.
Sept. 2-17, various times, $25-$30, Plays & Players, 1714 Delancey St., 215-413-1318, livearts-fringe.org.
