He sings Bobby Darin songs. He makes light bulbs float. He hopes you won't leave.
By KELLEY BENHAM
Published July 14, 2003
[Times photos: Kinfay Moroti]
Romeo leads audience member Cindy Santiago to the stage during a July 3 performance of his magic show at Busch Gardens.
Romeo sings to the audience after launching his assistant and girlfriend, Kristy Michelsen, from a cannon into a glass chamber filled with water.
Darren Romeo, the singing magician, stops for a final check of his makeup and hair moments before going on stage.
TAMPA - He wasn't sure about the gig, but Siegfried, or maybe Roy, told him to take it. Busch Gardens is not as snazzy as the Mirage, but better than hanging out by the pool all summer. Lots of young swooning girls in Florida.
"Maybe," says Darren in the voice of Siegfried, or perhaps Roy, "de teeny boppers vill fall in love vit you and be your fans."
Busch Gardens was not part of the original plan. But Darren Romeo believes in destiny. With a name like Darren Romeo, he pretty much has to.
So here he is, in the little dressing room with the plaid furniture and the jungle beat thumping outside.
He is cursing the humidity. It hurts his voice, defluffs his hair, clogs his pores. He sips water. Twists his hair with the goo Siegfried told him to use. Dabs concealer on some shoulder pimples. Hopes we won't mention that.
He goes on in half an hour, in front of hundreds of people who have never seen his face on the marquee in Vegas. People who can get up and go ride the roller coaster if he bores them.
He's a singing magician, and he knows how that sounds.
"You hear singing magician, you want to run."
But he's not just a singing magician, he's Darren Romeo, the Voice of Magic.
And he's not just the Voice of Magic, he's Siegfried & Roy presents Darren Romeo, the Voice of Magic.
Which makes him a very lucky singing magician who believes in destiny, because he has to. It has gotten him this far.
"It wasn't a choice," says the Voice of Magic. "There was nothing else at all for me to do."
About that name
His name really is Darren Romeo. He is the son of Sam and Joyce Romeo of East Meadow, N.Y. We didn't believe him until we called his mom.
They named him after the singer Bobby Darin. He grew up singing Dream Lover and Mack the Knife. He had a good voice.
One day, Uncle Vic sneezed and made his handkerchief disappear. The boy ran to his uncle and searched his sleeves. Soon Darren got a Blackstone magic set for Christmas. He was 9.
He practiced in front of the bathroom mirror.
"God forbid you had to use the bathroom," Mrs. Romeo says.
When he was 11, his father took him to see the famous magician Harry Blackstone Jr. at the Westbury Music Fair.
There, and this is where his whole destiny theory begins, these things happened:
* His father was picked out of the audience to be part of the show.
* His father gave Blackstone his son's first business card, Magic Darren, with a note on the back from the boy magician.
* Blackstone gave the boy a trained bird.
So the boy and his bird put together a show. He got pretty good. He traveled to conventions and competitions, and in eighth grade came to Tampa. The St. Petersburg Times, known for its keen magic criticism, wrote that "Magic Darren demonstrated polish, sophistication and confidence."
In high school, he did community theater and kept up the magic on weekends. This behavior, he acknowledges, had "dork connotations," but he at least had a homecoming date: his girlfriend Kristy Michelsen, his magician assistant.
Eventually his father asked him, "How far can you go with a bird act?"
He suggested the boy work some Bobby Darin songs into the act.
Magic Darren rolled his eyes. Puh-leeze.
"Dear Mr. Blackstone"
Now Siegfried and Roy, the aging Vegas icons, have anointed 27-year-old Darren Romeo their first-ever protege.
They found him at the Flamingo, doing a day show. When his contract ran out, the two guys famous for vanishing jungle animals gave him a break.
They shared their management team, their money and their theater at the Mirage. They put their faces on his CD.
They offered this sentiment for his Web site: "Darren reminds Siegfried and me of ourselves at the beginning of our careers," Roy says. "He is a dedicated performer with an endless desire to please an audience."
"They did it to help," Romeo says. "They put back in me this idea that not everyone is full of s--."
He has long since worked Bobby Darin into his act. He chose Dream Lover because it seemed less cheesy than Mack the Knife.
When Siegfried and Roy handed him his big chance, an afternoon show at the Mirage with all the publicity and trimmings, he went back to the place where he got his start with the bird. He went to the widow of Harry Blackstone Jr.
He asked to do Blackstone's famous floating light bulb illusion. Gay Blackstone had been asked before and always said no.
While she was thinking it over, she found one of her dead husband's old wallets. Inside were pictures of the children when they were small. And an old business card for Magic Darren.
Dear Mr. Blackstone
I am 11 years old and I want to be a famous magician like you some day. Can I come see you?
Magically, your friend,
Darren Romeo.
We didn't believe him until we called Mrs. Blackstone.
"There is just something special about him," she says.
When Romeo did the light bulb illusion opening night at the Mirage, Mrs. Blackstone was there, holding the card.
Behind the illusion
Destiny has done all it can for him for now. Siegfried and Roy are sending him out into the world, to find some fans. Maybe they will bring him back to the Mirage some day. Maybe they will bequeath their slot to him when they retire.
"That's up to them," Romeo says.
He was going to do China, but SARS intervened. Now he will sweat at Busch Gardens on a small stage that smells vaguely of animal musk. Twice a night, every night except Tuesdays, all summer. Kristy is still with him, now being shot from a cannon. They high-five before the show.
Siegfried and Roy call regularly to make sure it's going well. They sent baskets of stuffed white tigers to the dressing room, with a note promising that if he suffers, they will come.
Siegfried's sequined zebra coat, at least 15 pounds of it, hangs in Romeo's little dressing room closet. It's 25 years old. Romeo puts it on. It fits.
Also in the closet is his sequined shirt from his show at the Mirage. He doesn't put that on.
"It's cool in Vegas," he says. "It's not cool here."
To woo the younger demographic, Siegfried and Roy told him he needed to "hip it up."
He got some AX Armani sleeveless shirts. He put temporary tattoos on each shoulder - yin and yang on the right, a henna symbol on the left. He put copper highlights in his hair.
It's all image and illusion.
Except for this. He knows how this sounds, and he's going to say it anyway:
"I believe in fate and destiny."
Music is to his act what the tigers are to Siegfried and Roy. It's what the bad-boy image is to Penn and Teller. What comedy was to Harry Blackstone Jr.
Older magicians tell him he can't do music and magic together. He does it anyway.
"I know it works for me and it is real for me," he says. "Music is all born from something real. Emotions. Love and loss, feeling alone.
"Magic is just an art. Juggling is just an art. For me music is the pulse of what I do. It's the heart."
And then he stops. It's hard to talk about this without sounding cheesy. He keeps going.
"That's what magic is about. Whether I'm doing a trick or no trick, that's real magic."
A girl to call his own
Outside, the theater is packed, but not with swooning teeny-boppers.
Mostly you see families with children, freshly sunburned, many still wet from the Congo River Rapids and the Tanganyika Tidal Wave. They fan themselves with hats. Then the stage is dark, the music starts, and Romeo struts out onto the stage, clapping his hands.
Every night, I hope and pray,
a dream lover will come my way
Bubbles drift into the crowd. Kids leap for them. Pretty soon their fathers are singing along.
'cause I want . . . a girl . . . to call . . . my own
Darren strokes an air guitar. He builds a clear box out of plastic panels. Spins.
I want a dream lover . . .
Throws a cloth over the box. Whisks it away.
. . . so I don't have to dream alone.
Kristy materializes, in a sequined bikini top. She waves.
No one seems to be leaving. They are screaming, maybe even swooning.
The Voice of Magic approaches his audience at the edge of the stage.
"I'm Darren Romeo," he says. "I'm a singing magician. "Don't be scared."
At a glance
Darren Romeo performs at Busch Gardens' Stanleyville Theatre at 8:15 and 9:30 nightly except Tuesday. The show is included in the park's admission price, $51.95 for adults and $42.95 for children ages 3 to 9. Call toll-free 1-888-800-5447.
