Yesterday I caught "Being Harry Houdini" at the Academy of Music. There's something about magic performance that seems to me older than the hills. I know music has been around as long or longer, but the trappings, even the premise of magic, are very old-fashioned in a way that little else can be. It's almost an emissary from the pre-Ironic Age.
We all know it's trickery; I've personally had such a longtime fascination with magic that I knew exactly how to do much of what we saw, and can do a little of it very badly–I say that not because I think I'm cool or something, but to make this point: even knowing Howie Diddit didn't diminish the power of first-rate prestidigitateur Michael Paul, who was, as far as I'm concerned, the star of the show.
I know just how hard it is to accomplish the effect (well, family of them, really) called Coins Across, and so, to watch Paul do his version, in which four coins travel miraculously across the table and even from the magician's hand to the spectator's, was like watching someone effortlessly take a guitar solo I could only dream about pulling off with similar grace. This dude can dazzle. And even for the non-hack-magician, it had to be an impressive display, since everyone knows you can't do what he did.
At one point, Paul made a coin appear to vanish right in the open palm of a spectator. That's the sort of remarkable spectacle that a magician must be able to pull off these days in order to be more than a geeky performer with a penchant for the goofy past–it's all snickers and knowing glances one minute, and jaw-dropped awe the next. Michael Paul pulled that off with easy grace, and offered something I'm personally a bit ambivalent about, but which always impresses nonetheless–he manipulated cards in a fast-moving series of what are basically stunts, stuff like one-handed cuts and baroque flipping and shuffling, just in case anybody needed to be certain of his skills.
Paul, a young Springfield native, is going to be quite a star in the rather small world of top-flight magicians.
The other performers offered something quite different. Todd Robbins, whom I recently interviewed, offered sideshow stunts like hammering a nail in his nose and eating a lightbulb. Some of what he did can be faked, but performers like Robbins pride themselves on not sinking to such a level. And the mic offered a terrifying crunch as he munched a 60-watt GE. Not for the faint of heart!
Magician David Garrity offered the old-school illusions for the day, escaping from a straitjacket a la Houdini, right in front of the crowd. Not a fun way to spend an afternoon, but I guess it pays the bills. Garrity's most impressive feat was the never-fail Houdini trick in which he is bound and put inside a trunk. His assistant raises a four-sided curtain very briefly as she stands atop the crate, then throws the curtain upward–it falls to reveal Garrity atop the crate, then, shortly thereafter, his assistant bound inside the crate. Knowing how they did it doesn't make it less impressive–Garrity and his assistant pulled off some very difficult things, and did it in high style.
Still, far and away, Michael Paul's your fellow if you want your brain to tingle from the frisson of the possible impossible. Glad I finally saw him.
