The Country Time Music Theater at Ski World, Nashville, Indiana, is normally the weekend home of The Lloyd Wood Show, a high-energy country-western band. The facility is also just down the road from Nashville's Little Nashville Opry, which features the same big names in country music as does the real Grand Ole Opry in the real Nashville. This would seem as unlikely a place as any for The World's Foremost Mentalist to attract and impress an audience, but The Amazing Kreskin did just that on Friday and Saturday, Oct 3 and 4.

I attended the Friday 8:00 P.M. show. The audience was a mostly older crowd (old enough to have remembered Kreskin's syndicated tv show from the seventies). Four female senior citizens sat to my right, while a young family of four sat to my left. There were couples in their forties, very few children. Dress was casual; I assumed it to be the same crowd as for the Lloyd Wood Show. Except: prior to the show there was a communal apprehension, and more than a few folks talking about the fact that Kreskin "really reads minds."

The printed programs and the opening voiceover contained disclaimers that are masterpieces of double talk. Whatever you wanted to believe, you could find in these messages.

Kreskin appeared promptly at 8 in a dark suit with a bright red plaid vest, at once looking showbiz yet non-threatening. Despite having been up since 3 A.M., he exuded energy and enthusiasm and kept it up for a show that ran over two hours. The audience in turn greeted him with enthusiastic applause and maintained its end of the deal for the duration.

Kreskin opened by talking for 20 to 30 minutes. He is an unabashed name-dropper who drops more names than Harry Lorayne as he mentions the various talk shows on which he has appeared and celebrities with whom he has worked. I knew in advance that this was how he opens his show, but I wasn't prepared to enjoy it as much as I did. I quickly realized that I was witnessing a wonderfully delivered comedy monologue. The "name-dropping," along with various jokes about being a mentalist, are simply the subject matter of this very funny routine. Kreskin's comedic persona harkens back to such comics as Jack Benny and George Gobel and Edgar Bergen: he is self-deprecating and gentle. There is no chip-on-the-shoulder or I'm-hipper-than-you attitude, just warm humor. He seems to genuinely like all the people he's met in television. It's a very nice opening.

It's also sneaky: all this talk about being on so many talk shows translates into a heightened credibility, while joking about the methods of fake mentalists (radio sets in their glasses, etc.) prepares the audience to accept whatever a real mentalist might do.

To further put the audience in a receptive mood, Kreskin segued into the "amazing" portion of the show via the linking finger rings. Again he engaged the audience through considerable comedy and through discussions of how more mortal magicians accomplish the linking and unlinking of borrowed objects.

A card revelation effect followed, with Kreskin playing the piano as a gentleman from the audience repeatedly cut the deck. Vernon used to say it would be effective to combine magic and music; Kreskin has figured out how. (For magicians familiar with the plot of this particular card revelation, there was a nice magician-fooling climax to the piece.)

An extended billet reading session came next, for which Kreskin chose to spend part of the time seated in what I can only call an illuminated isolation booth. It was a Chinese screen affair that allowed him to sit and write his impressions on a pad without anyone observing him from behind or the sides. This chamber also provided a focal point for various humorous observations prior to its use. (My only disappointment here is that it looked as if it could have been used for a spirit cabinet, which alas did not occur.) From this vantage point Kreskin "received" the important names, dates, and other significant bits of information the audience members had written on billets. And we all received a billet -- the responses were evenly spread throughout the audience. Kreskin eventually asked a child to stand and choose one billet from among several to concentrate on. When asked not to reveal the information on the billet, opened at last, the child cracked up the audience and the performer by announcing, "I can't read!" With the help of a nearby adult Kreskin brought this segment to a convincing conclusion by duplicating the writing on the scrap of paper.

He closed the first half of the show with his celebrated ability to find his paycheck that was hidden by an audience committee. (A few months back, Kreskin appeared on The Bob and Tom Show, a popular Indianapolis radio spot. A caller deftly turned the tables on this feat by saying, "If you can find me, dude, I'll buy you lunch!") The check was found, despite my fears that the audience guy had hidden it too high for the performer to reach.

An ample intermission gave me the opportunity to purchase the saltiest bag of popcorn ever concocted.

Kreskin returned after intermission sans jacket, and wearing a dark solid vest instead of the red plaid. A wisp of his white collar above the vest gave him a priestly look. An emphatic murmur of approval rippled through the audience. Chairs had been arranged on stage for the hypnotism segment of the show. I should point out that Kreskin makes a firm point to deny the existence of hypnotism, calling it instead merely a state of heightened suggestibility, but the term suffices here to convey the nature of the entertainment that followed, so I'll stick with its traditional interpretation.

As mentioned earlier, the audience was a mostly older crowd, and I felt Kreskin would have a difficult time luring any of them to the stage to participate in what they knew could make them look silly. How wrong I was! They flooded to the stage, and Kreskin had no difficulty sifting out a quorum of perfect subjects. It was back to the piano, this time a rendition of Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender," for the trigger that induced a convincing trance-like state. (In viewing the Eddie Fields video, I noticed the ad for Nate Pessaro, the Singing Hypnotist. What is it with hypnotism and music?) In a final brilliant piece of staging, it was the spelling out of K-R-E-S-K-I-N that released the subjects from the grips of a post-hypnotic suggestion (or whatever K-r-e-s-k-i-n might call it).

In all it was a most entertaining two hours, and while the magic and mentalism left most of the audience in a state of respectful awe, for me it was the boundless energy and the first-rate comedic delivery that produced the always happy feeling of an evening well-spent.