What does it mean to be strong in today’s world?
Celebrated for truly Herculean performances at festivals and fairs, “Mighty Mike” Johns has been providing one kind of answer to that question for more than ten years. Now he takes his awe-inspiring strongman act to a whole new level with his new theatrical revue The Last Strongman at Theatre Passe Muraille. Co-written and directed by Deanna Fleysher with the Canada Arts Council’s support, Mighty Mike’s solo performance blends physical prowess and emotional resilience, pushing the boundaries of strength in the contemporary world.
“It’s going to be the very best show I could put on,” explains Mighty Mike. After honing his strongman act for a decade, Mighty Mike is pouring the same kind of grit and resolve into The Last Strongman. But the stakes and scope of this challenge are bigger. His goal in the show is no less than to achieve a third Guinness World Record . . . without succumbing to an emotional breakdown. His punishing training is “a daily grind, focusing entirely on strength and conditioning.” And he warns audiences, “Expect the unexpected during my record-breaking attempts. It’s going to be a wild ride!”
The show’s genesis lies in a real-life version of the emotional and physical fortitude that Mighty Mike displays in the show itself. When his strongman performances were forcibly paused during the pandemic shutdown, a surprise grant from the Canada Council for the Arts prompted this shift to developing a theatrical show. Working through the transition and mounting The Last Strongman at Theatre Passe Muraille “has been a whole different beast”, however.
What challenges has he encountered? “There are plenty,” he reveals. And they straddle a wry, self-deprecating continuum from the physical to the emotional to the financial: “I tore my rotator cuff a little while back, and have had to keep performing during that time because I’m not qualified for anything else.” In fact, he muses, “I’m not sure I have the full support of my parents in these endeavours!” Additionally, the challenge of trying to buy a house in the radius he has set for the Google ads for his show requires selling more tickets than his shoulder can likely hold on for. And all this is not to mention that “I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I’m still not on Netflix yet. And the highly-speculative psychedelic medicine industry that I’m heavily invested in, is way down.” The one ace in this crooked hand is the energy he has always drawn from a cheering live audience, “so come on out and lend me that support!”
The Last Strongman invites audiences to witness a unique blend of past and present, wrapped in a show with broad appeal. In the show, Mighty Mike dresses and performs in a way that pays homage to the iconic strongmen of yesteryear: “In the 1920s, there was a strongman named Joseph ‘The Mighty Atom’ Greenstein. He used to bend horseshoes and steel bars. He taught Slim “The Hammer Man” Farman, who used to do feats with sledgehammers, as well as bending steel. Slim taught Dennis Rogers, who taught me.” Yet while Mighty Mike replicates the feats so they are technically “the same as in the old days,” the show has a distinctly modern feel. It is a “’family crowd” show, not a kids show: “My show is totally suitable for everyone, as I usually perform at fairs and festivals. Of course, don’t bring your two-year-old who won’t understand anything and scream through the show, or I’ll start screaming as well. I performed elements of it at the State Fair of Texas this year, and they were really into it!”
This show is especially important to Mighty Mike for a strongman’s blend of existential and pragmatic reasons. Says Mike, “We all have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.” His own second life began when he found his passion for performing on the streets of the world. “It’s been a decade after that discovery, and I’m still going.”
But even a strongman has his limits: “I probably won’t go for that much longer, so let’s make the last years some big theatre years, and make up for all the struggles. Right, folks? Get your tickets now!”
The Last Strongman runs November 15th to 18th at 8:00 pm to Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto, Canada. Click here for tickets.
© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2023
