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May. 28, 2025

Concert Review: Alice Cooper Shocks and Rocks Connecticut Casino with Monsters, Snakes, and a Surprise Guest

via American Songwriter

Alice Cooper’s Too Close for Comfort tour descended onto the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, on Friday, May 23. The macabre spectacle had everything you’d expect from a show by the world’s most famous shock rocker—including multiple staged murders; a beheading; a slithering boa constrictor; a giant Frankenstein monster; and a bunch of great rock ‘n’ roll songs.

The concert also featured an unexpected appearance by original Alice Cooper Group bassist Dennis Dunaway, who joined the singer and his current band for a rocking rendition of Cooper’s 1971 signature tune “School’s Out” near the end of the evening.

The show featured Alice bouncing around to various eras of his long career, starting with a rendition of 1987 tune “Lock Me Up.” That led into the newest song played at the concert, “Welcome to the Show,” from Cooper’s 2023 album, Road.

Cooper and company then got the crowd going with renditions of two of his biggest early hits—“No More Mr. Nice Guy” (1973) and “I’m Eighteen” (1970). The latter tune showcased blazing solos by two of the three talented guitar players in Alice’s band—Ryan Roxie and Nita Strauss.

Up next was the rocking 1971 fan favorite “Under My Wheels,” followed by “Bed of Nails,” a minor 1989 U.K. hit for Cooper, and the title track of the classic 1973 Alice Cooper album Billion Dollar Babies.

Cooper’s Props

Throughout the concert, Cooper donned a variety of jackets and wielded various props, including a cane, crutch, dagger, fencing sword, riding crop and whip.

For the version his 1991 song “Snakebite” at the Connecticut show, Alice introduced one of his most famous and recognizable props, a live boa constrictor. During the performance, Cooper had the snake draped around his neck. He also allowed the reptile to crawl over his head.

The Onstage Body Count

After playing the 1971 gem “Be My Lover” and the 1994 tune “Lost in America,” Cooper kicked into a version of “He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask).” The tune was the theme song to the 1986 horror film Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. During the performance, a young woman intruded onto the stage. As she to bowed in reverence of Strauss, who was playing a solo, a masked man dressed as Jason came up from behind her and appeared to slit her throat with a machete.

The next song was the title track of Cooper’s 1991 album Hey Stoopid. During that performance, a man interrupted Alice to try to take photos of him. Cooper proceeded to (apparently) impale the would-be paparazzo with his cane.

Cooper’s longtime touring drummer, Glen Sobel, then delivered an impressive drum solo, as a wooden platform and staircase was brought onto the stage.

From the platform, Alice sang the ominous title track of his 1975 concert album, Welcome to My Nightmare.

At the end of the tune, Cooper threw a female dummy off of the platform and onto the stage, in preparation for what turned out to be the show’s creepiest moment. Alice descended to the stage and proceeded to manhandle the dummy as he sang the Welcome to My Nightmare track “Cold Ethyl.” The song is basically about a man who has his way with a dead woman’s body.

Next up was a rendition of the 1976 song “Goes to Hell,” during which Cooper’s daughter, Calico, hit the stage wielding a whip. Her dad eventually took the whip from her and briefly choked her with it before she stormed off stage.

Cooper Loses His Head

Cooper rocked the crowd with his 1991 comeback hit “Poison.” A video clip of the late Vincent Price from Cooper’s 1975 Welcome to My Nightmare TV special then set up a guitar jam featuring Roxie, Strauss, and third guitarist Tommy Henriksen.

Cooper was brought onto the stage in a straitjacket by a masked man who zapped him with a cattle prod multiple times as Alice sang the eerie 1971 tune “Ballad of Dwight Fry.” At the end of the performance, Cooper freed himself from his restraints, pulled a dagger from his boot and stabbed his tormentor.

At the same time, Cooper wife’s, Sheryl, dressed a Marie Antoinette, appeared on the stage and embraced her husband. This happened as a guillotine was brought onto the stage by two men in executioner’s outfits. Alice was then led to the guillotine, and Sheryl did the honor of (apparently) chopping off her hubby’s head.

Sheryl then grabbed the head from the basket under the guillotine and pranced around the stage with it. Alice’s band provided an appropriate soundtrack for the interlude with a performance of the Billion Dollar Babies track “I Love the Dead.”

The Show’s Finale

Cooper, donning a white tuxedo, returned to the stage with his head intact for the finale of the concert. Alice and his band ripped into the aforementioned classic “School’s Out,” with Dunaway making a surprise appearance with the group.

The middle of the performance included a section of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.” Giant, confetti-filled balloons were kicked out into the crowd, and Cooper popped them as they were rolled back to the stage.

For an encore, Cooper and the band performed his 1991 tune “Feed My Frankenstein,” as a man in a giant Frankenstein monster costume lurked across the stage. Everyone who apparently was murdered during the show also came out onstage.

Bringing the creepy evening to a close, Alice left the audience with the heartwarming words, “May all of your lovely dreams … become nightmares!”

Cooper’s Upcoming Tour Plans

The Mohegan Sun Arena show was the next-to-last concert on Cooper’s 2025 spring U.S. tour leg. The outing wrapped up with a May 24 concert in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Next up for Alice is a June 14 performance at the Best of Blues and Rock Festival in São Paulo, Brazil. Cooper will then head to Europe for a summer trek. That outing is scheduled from a July 5 performance in Hannover, Germany, through a July 30 concert in Schaffhausen, Switzerland.

Alice will finish the summer with a series of U.S. dates. That leg is plotted out from a joint show with My Chemical Romance on August 15 in Philadelphia through an August 30 headlining concert at the Graceland Soundstage in Memphis, Tennessee.

Then, Cooper will team up with Judas Priest for a joint North American fall tour. The trek is plotted out from a September 16 show in Biloxi, Mississippi, through an October 26 concert in The Woodlands, Texas.

Cooper’s Forthcoming Studio Album

As previously reported, Cooper’s next studio album, The Revenge of Alice Cooper, will be released on July 25. The record is the first full-length is the first full-length album Alice has made with the other three surviving original members of the Alice Cooper group—Dunaway, guitarist Michael Bruce, and drummer Neal Smith—since Muscle of Love in 1973.

Alice Cooper Set List, Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, CT – 5/23/2025:

  1. “Lock Me Up”
  2. “Welcome to the Show”
  3. “No More Mr. Nice Guy”
  4. “I’m Eighteen”
  5. “Under My Wheels”
  6. “Bed of Nails”
  7. “Billion Dollar Babies”
  8. “Snakebite”
  9. “Be My Lover”
  10. “Lost in America”
  11. “He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask)”
  12. “Hey Stoopid”
  13. Drum Solo
  14. “Welcome to My Nightmare”
  15. “Cold Ethyl”
  16. “Go to Hell”
  17. “Poison”
  18. Guitar Solo
  19. “Black Widow Jam”
  20. “Ballad of Dwight Fry”
  21. “Killer”
  22. “I Love the Dead”
  23. “School’s Out”/“Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” (with Dennis Dunaway)

Encore:

  1. “Feed My Frankenstein”