The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
‘Illusionists’ is a mostly winning bag of tricks
A man is handcuffed, shackled by his feet and hung upside down in a tank of water.
The clock ticks (and ticks … and ticks). He holds his breath, and so do we: Will he make it out alive?
Holy Houdini! With nothing more than a paper clip, he picks the locks and emerges safely.
Andrew Basso — a handsome, Italian-born escape artist — is one of the seven namesake acts in “The Illusionists: Live From Broadway,” a glitzy, high-tech magic show that had a limited New York engagement a couple of years ago and is now on tour. (Presented by Broadway in Atlanta, “The Illusionists” opened Tuesday at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre and continues through Sunday.)
In the old days, magicians pulled rabbits out of hats and performed sleight-of-hand tricks with cards. Not anymore. “The Illusionists” announces itself with the faux-gravitas of a wildly hyped, high-stakes TV talent show: flashing lights, throbbing electronica, an air of drama and suspense: Can they pull it off ? Are you ready to be scared to death?
After a tedious warmup act by a Liberace-like crackpot known as the Trickster ( Jeff Hobson), the curtain rises on the rest of the group: the Weapon Master (Ben Blaque), the Deductionist (Colin Cloud), the Manipulator (Yu Ho-Jin), the Inventor (Kevin James), the Anti-Conjuror (Dan Sperry) and the Escapologist (Basso).
This is going to be big! This is going to be huge, y’all!
Even the most jaded of viewers (that would be me) will be mesmerized and surprised by the spectacle.
Cloud, a Scotsman who describes himself as the evil twin of Neil Patrick Harris and trained as a forensics investigator, is not exactly Mr. Charisma.
He might bore you to death, but man is he clever.
Calling a woman up onstage — we should mention that there’s tons of audience participation, and if you’re sitting up front, you’ll be especially vulnerable — he guesses where she’s from (Roswell), her profession (a sports commentator) and the name of her first pet (Botnick).
Heck, he revealed so many clues that even I figured out who she was, and I’m no Sherlock. (Hi, Ashley Rosenberg! I used to work with your dad.)
Ho-Jin, hailing from South Korea, has an elegant and ethereal touch. He turns his white scarf into a deck of cards and proceeds to erase and reinvent them. It’s as if he has a magical jet-ink printer up his sleeve.
Blaque, who looks like Fabio with a crossbow, arranges six of his weapons on tripods, dons a blindfold and puts an apple on his head. Then with the touch of his finger, he triggers a chain reaction that causes each crossbow to fire in splitsecond fashion.
Dang if that final arrow doesn’t pierce right through that apple. Bam!
James calls down a young audience member, crinkles up a piece of paper and makes it float around and dance up his arm. Later, he separates a man’s legs from his torso (what?) and creates a shower Grade: B 7:30 p.m. Sept. 28-29; 8 p.m. Sept. 30-Oct. 1; 2 p.m. Oct 1; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Oct. 2. $33.50$88.50. Broadway in Atlanta, Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 1-855-285-8499, broadwayinAtlanta. com. Bottom line: Reality TVstyle magic. And some of it’s not bad. of snow from a single piece of paper. He’s sublime.
On the scabrous side, there’s Sperry, who mocks the conventions of old-school magic with his snarly, punkrock attitude. Goth boy that he is, his coin trick turns into a bloody gross-out mess, and one of his white doves magically turns crimson. This guy may be hard to like, but it’s that very lack of appeal that makes him so appealing. He’s the most natural performer of them all.
Sure, there’s some dead air in this two-hour show. But there’s plenty of material that will make you squirm with panic. Or feel giddy with joy.
Show up expecting to chug beer, and you end up sipping fine champagne. That’s why they call it an illusion.