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Alice's magical mystery tour gets under way

Alice Cooper previewed his new show at the old Capitol Theatre in Portchester, New York this week. It was a dress rehearsal of sorts - Alice is about to kick off the mammoth tour next week in Philadelphia.

The production, which will travel to sixty cities in the next 56 days, features many new visual props. Among the most spectacular is a guillotine - a guillotine where Alice's head is chopped off.

The Amazing Randi is the gallow's man who chops off Alice's head, and then holds it up for the audience to see . . . (Randi is the magician has been working with Alice for weeks; he is a very obvious part of the show.)

Throughout the show Alice waves scarves that turn into canes, and employs various other magical visuals. During one number, entitled "Unfinished Sweet," Alice is operated on for a toothache; he lies down on a silver table, squeezes an enormous tube of toothpaste between his legs, and holds up a giant toothbrush that is bigger than he is.

It's all part of the act - a dentist comes on with a huge drill, and there's a fog machine . . . and well, I don't want to give too much of it away just yet. Extremely effective also is an enormous mummy with flashing eyes that is propped up onstage behind Neil Smith throughout the performance.

The first half of the show is performed with the band wearing white satin suits; the second half was all of them in various black ensembles.

Alice's outfit is a kind of shimmery material trousers that go a bit above waist, and a sort of bikini glittery bra top. The songs are "Hello Hurray," "Billion Dollar Baby," "Elected," "Eighteen," "No More Mr. Nice Guy," "My Stars," "Raped And Freezin'," "Unfinished Sweet" - then there's a taped bit of Moussorgsky's "Night On Bald Mountain," followed by "Sick Things" and "Dead Babies," where Alice is cutting up baby dolls again.

Then the production finale begins with the song "I Love The Dead" - that's where the guillotine appears and Alice slithers alongside it and fondles the contraption. "School's Out" follows, then comes "Under My Wheels," and the last song of the evening - "God Bless America," sing exactly the way Kate Smith used to do it.

Get ready, here he comes . . . .