Definitely Not Your Uncle Ned’s Parlor Tricks
Charles IsherwoodDecember 4, 2014: Here’s a trick I’d like to see some world-class magician perform: Make the Marriott Marquis Theater, the monolithic hotel that houses it and the monstrous video screen that now wraps around its facade — turning an ugly building even uglier — disappear. And then keep waving that wand and bring back the five Broadway theaters that were demolished when this Times Square eyesore was built. Should this feat take place imminently, gone, too, would be The Illusionists, an overproduced and overblown magic show featuring seven talented tricksters drowning in a sea of cheese. Magic acts, it seems to me, are best served like a nice dry martini, straight up. (As was the case with the charming, frill-free show Nothing to Hide, which played Off Broadway last December.) That’s not the theory behind this bombast-riddled production directed and choreographed by Neil Dorward, which opened Thursday night. It seems to have been designed along the lines of television contest shows like The Voice and America’s Got Talent, with all sorts of trumped-up glitz attempting to feed the excitement. We get continuous blasts of thunderous, supposedly suspense-enhancing music played onstage by a band. In addition to the magicians themselves, a chorus of assistants slinks around in gothic attire attempting to look sexy, or menacing, or something. There are laser beams, digital video screens and more. All this serves not to enhance the brilliance of the feats being performed but to distract from it. In fact, all the fancy stagecraft surrounding the acts makes the tricks themselves seem less impressive. A giant screen that hangs above the stage, offering us a close-up view of the sleight of hand, tends to grab your attention. Everyone knows that watching a magic act on television instead of live robs it of much of its allure. The simpler feats performed in “The Illusionists” are the most impressive.
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