If you want comedy, magic — presto, go see Gemini

Oct. 12, 2000

What happens when you try to blend the styles of Frank Sinatra and Ozzy Osbourne?

A musical train wreck?

No, sometimes it's magic. At least it is this week through Saturday at Hilarities with Gemini and his entourage ending a two-week run as headlining act.

The regular shows are a mix of comedy, magic and ventriloquism. And at 2 p.m. Saturday there's a children's show planned at the Cuyahoga Falls venue.

"The kids' show is a whole other show," says Johnny Lombardi, aka Gemini. "We bring in clowns, and there's no heavy music."

Lombardi says he likes to entertain kids, especially since he has a young daughter and newborn son he misses while on the road.

The performer considers magic "something from the heart. Even if you're an adult, you still sit and stare and wonder."

He has a simple description of his act: "I do a little bit of comedy and a little it of magic. What you laugh at, that's the comedy. What you don't, well, that's the magic."

Lombardi opens his act silently with magic carefully choreographed to music. His hands are harmlessly engulfed in flames.

"To me, magic is romantic," he says. "And not speaking to an audience at first adds to it. Besides, my New York accent spoils the effect."

While Lombardi spends part of his act playing to the tunes of Frank Sinatra, Mike Trixx performs to heavy metal sounds.

Lombardi says he met Trixx while Trixx was a street performer in Boston.

"I told him to come to the club that I was at and perform," Lombardi says.

There was just one problem, Trixx says: "I had only done table magic. I stayed up all night learning a couple of tricks. Then I went down to the club and did 3½ or four minutes. A couple of years later, I was headlining that club."

Lombardi and Trixx have seen the funny and the truly scary while performing. It's easy for Trixx to pick out his best and worst time onstage. "The best time was probably the first big club I was in, in Greensville, N.C. There were probably 500 people and I got a great response."

The worst for Trixx was when a knife blade got put in backwards and cut him. He spent the rest of his act bleeding.

For Lombardi, it was even scarier: "The flames were shooting up higher than they were supposed to. People thought it was part of the act. I got second-degree burns."

"The best time is easy," he adds. "Anytime I get a standing ovation. That's better than any drug."

Besides the current show, Lombardi performs stand-up solo and recently completed a short film, "Is this Mike On?" about the backstage experiences at a club during a weekend when three comics are performing. It's under consideration for the Sundance Film Festival.

While he's waiting to hear about that, Lombardi says he's concentrating on the comedy and magic show.

He also knows his ultimate goal for that: "I want our own show. In a place like Vegas. You'd be doing the same sort of tricks but on a much bigger scale. You'd amplify them by about 50."

Rodney Bengston, an editor in Sun Newspapers' Metro office, covers Northeast Ohio's comedy scene.