Well-executed magic show does the trick
Surely no type of artist has to spend more time convincing his own audience of his legitimacy than the magician does.
At Marrakech Magic Theater, at least, Jay Alexander has a parry at the ready for every imaginable thrust. No, it won’t compromise your masculinity to come onstage and make glancing physical contact with another man. No, he really can’t see through his three types of blindfold, one layer of which is black tape that’d peel his eyebrows off if he didn’t ChapStick them first. No, he’s not using a whole deck of the 10 of spades. That “would be stupid,” he said more than once at a Friday, Dec. 22, performance of his ongoing show.
But with his sleight of hand — and, in one slightly icky but no less cool instance, “sleight of mouth” — Alexander emphatically isn’t trying to make you feel stupid, even as he’s anticipated your every bit of skepticism. His mien throughout his card tricks, mind reading, number games and feats of extraordinary coincidence is that of a nerd with overweening enthusiasm — enthusiasm he only wants you to share. “It freaks me out every time,” he frequently offers after card tricks, only partly in jest.
Just descending the steps to the theater, which is in the lower level of Marrakech Moroccan Restaurant (whose appetizers and drinks are available for purchase preshow), is enough of an experience to pique your enthusiasm. Vintage posters of magicians past — “In mid-air Carter materializes a bowl of water weighing 150 lbs” — line the darkened stairwell and the walls of the lounge, which is all arabesque arches, stained glass lanterns and crushed velvet banquettes.
There, Alexander performs close-up magic (one-on-one tricks, sans the conceit of a stage) 30 to 40 minutes before the official show starts in a tiny jewel box theater across the hall. No party on Dec. 22 — be it preteen birthday revelers or middle-aged cocktail swillers — could outwit his ability to redirect attention away from the actual trickery. The way he rubs his forefinger and thumb together, with near-surgical precision, makes for a kind of hypnotic dance. The tiny undulation is so specific, so incisive, that your adult brain can rediscover, for just a moment, long-lost childhood fantasies that it might really be possible for the supernatural to possess a human hand.
In the theater itself, Alexander offers a glimpse into his process, explaining a few of the physical “tells” and psychological rationales that help him guess in which hand, say, an audience member might hide a ring. (One hint: When you’re assessing which way a liar’s face is pointing, “the nose knows.”) It’s a canny bit of openness, because as his effects introduce more and more variables, thereby making his guesses and coincidences more and more improbable, you have a slightly more nuanced metric for appreciating just how much expertise lies behind a deceptively simple maneuver.
Though Alexander’s patter occasionally becomes cheesy or repetitive — frequent testaments to his own artistry make you wish for less conversation, more action — a bit of vulnerability near the show’s end refreshes, especially if you walk into Marrakech Magic Theater with stereotypes about magicians. Magic, Alexander says, helped him overcome crippling childhood shyness resulting from a speech impediment and dyslexia. Is that magic (or meta-magic)? Maybe. But like Alexander’s show as a whole, it’s also the product of years of craft, persistence and ardor. Lily Janiak is The San Francisco Chronicle’s theater critic. Email: ljaniak@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LilyJaniak