GROTESQUE EVENTS TRANSPIRED on the humble stage of Théâtre St. Denis Wednesday night, when the mischievous master of the macabre led a packed venue into the deepest, darkest recesses of his subconscious. Four decades after he began shocking audiences, Alice Cooper proved that, at the ripe age of 60, he’s still as twisted, as demented, as ever.
Hidden by a tarp that read “Alice Cooper,” the set was transformed from the traditional rock fare into a veritable spider’s lair, casting an ominous mood. The drums, high on risers, were flanked by the destitute remains of some natural habitat, while decapitated heads littered the amplifiers and forgotten netting dressed the risers. When the lights dimmed, a spotlight shone brightly from behind the stage, and the unmistakable silhouette of Alice Cooper, ragged and cloaked, appeared larger than life. After slaying his monstrous double, he launched into No More Mr Nice Guy with the venom of a disenfranchised teenager, foreshadowing a night that would be anything but tame.
As he moved through old favourites, including I’m Eighteen and Under My Wheels, the audience (perhaps a little older than most rock crowds) sang along with every melody, chanted every chorus, and pumped their fists for every ecstatic release of energy. But the bubbly charm of old classics proved to be a facade: the performance soon moved beyond the realm of quaint rock antics into a frightening, expressionistic, theatrical world. The eerie mood continued through an immaculate performance of songs spanning his career and tied together by the onstage action, starting with Welcome to my Nightmare.
Halo of Flies saw him drag a female mannequin to toss around the stage in anger. In Only Women Bleed, the mannequin came to life, leaping freely about the stage, as if Cooper’s nightmare had descended into a demented circus. This led into Dead Babies, complete with performer and the mannequin’s own creepy offspring (the image of his father) in a deathly stroller. As the song concluded, Cooper drove a stake through mannequin/child, resolving his descent into denial, abandonment and murder. The sick love story ended with the mannequin summoning various harbingers of death, who painstakingly rolled out the gallows and dragged a straight-jacketed Cooper to his fate. Strobe lights flashed while duelling guitars rose into the high registers for the climax, and Alice Cooper plunged to his death, whipping the crowd into frenzy.
Then, as if stirring from a dream, he appeared from the depths of the stage in a swirl of smoke to explode through a cathartic School’s Out, carousing through exuberant renditions of Billion Dollar Babies, Poison, and I Love the Dead. As soon as the audience was beginning to readjust to normalcy, the final song (Elected) erupted, replete with Obama and McCain puppets fighting while Cooper made his own presidential bid.
A resounding finale: the performer disappeared from stage, leaving the crowd blinking in the brightness of the house lights. As the venue emptied out into St. Denis St., we were of one mind: Alice Cooper is the spider.
