 One of the stars of Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants |
The Little Egypt Gazette News -- January 1997
RICKY JAY AND HIS 52 ASSISTANTS -- In 1994 Ricky Jay became off-Broadway's hottest
ticket with his 90-minute concert of card tricks and lore, attracting such celebrity audience
members as Steve Martin and Woody Allen, and casting a spell over the critics. The show, enhanced by a Kevin Rigdon
Victorian set and sanctioned for New York theater-goers through the direction of David Mamet,
quickly sold out its run at the 122-seat Second Stage Theater. The show resurfaced later in
Chicago, Los Angeles, and Australia (to blithely mix cities and continents), but the intimacy
required by the show has prevented many magicians and most of the public at large from
witnessing it. Happily, this situation ended last month when a 60-minute extract of Ricky Jay
and His 52 Assistants aired, under the same title, on HBO. We quickly consulted the original
reviews to see what had been omitted. Notably -- we counted a three-card monte sequence,
something involving a tattoo on Ricky's arm, and an automaton performing a torn and restored
card. What remained was wonderful, however. The commercial-free 60 minutes provided ample
validation for the earlier critical raves, as Ricky went against the grain of the high-tech, large-scale illusions and glitzy production values that attend most televised magic specials,
entertaining only with a deck of cards, some silly accessories ranging from wind-up plastic toys
to half a watermelon, and some literate talk. Even Ricky's appearance goes against the grain of
the lady-killer looks, say, of a David Copperfield or a Lance Burton: "a burly, bearded man with
the look of a gentle gangster" (Ben Brantley, New York Times), "a little like Burl Ives on a diet,
a Hollywood gangster on a vacation, a U.S. senator in some naughty recess" (Clive Barnes, New
York Post), "a little seedy and mysterious" (David Patrick Stearns, USA Today). I
unhesitatingly loved the show, but turned to one of my favorite layman friends for specific
opinions. He favored the false dealing and the card tossing, and liked the cups and balls the
least. "There was this lady in the front row," he said, "with long legs and a skirt up to here. I
kept wondering when he was going to invite her on stage." Ricky obliged us in the second act,
as the young woman participated in Ricky's hilarious wind-up toy routine. Per our notes last
month, this special aired several times in December, and we hope you tuned in. (It should
continue to appear at odd times on HBO if you missed it -- consult your listings.)
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SPHERE -- Articles and multimedia features on Richard Robinson's The Magic Show are
ephemeral, but if you haven't looked in lately, check out his video zombie routine entitled
"Sphere." It opens with a shocking flash transformation of a framed mirror to a zombie ball, the
now empty frame dangling from his arm. HEY! UP ON STAGE! ISN'T THAT THE BOSS? -- During one of the last weeks of December
at the Magic Castle, with a last-minute cancellation leaving Ron Wilson stuck for an emcee-type
in the Palace of Mystery, Ron asked Milt Larsen to fill in. Milt gladly agreed and did all 21
shows, working with Amos Levkovitch and Goldfinger and Dove. As Milt put it, "it was nice
hauling out some of our family repertoire of some standards that are so old they are almost new
again."
UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES -- Do ghosts exist? Can we communicate with the dead? The
topic is apparently as relevant today as it was in the 1876 courtroom case against Henry Slade,
who popularized spirit slate writing. The Slade trial is entertainingly described in Richard
Milner's "Charles Darwin and Associates, Ghostbusters," in the October 1996 issue of Scientific
American. While Darwin sided with zoologist Edwin Lankester (who filed suit against Slade) as
anti-ghost, Darwin's co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace,
weighed in as pro-ghost, along with Arthur Conan Doyle, physicist Oliver Lodge, and chemist
William Crookes (discover of thallium), all of whom sought "a wireless telegraph' to an
intangible world." John Nevil Maskelyne appeared in the courtroom as a nineteenth-century
Amazing Randi, duplicating Slade's phenomena by standard conjuring methods. Jumping ahead
120 years to this week's headlines from Rome, the Rev. Gino Concetti, chief theological
commentator for the Vatican newspaper, raised eyebrows by "declaring that the Church believes
in the feasibility of communication with the dead." Although the Church "remains opposed to
the raising of spirits," Concetti added: "Communication is possible between those who live in a
state of eternal repose, in heaven or in purgatory." The world of the spirit medium, not to
mention the world of such television commentators as Robert Stack, continues to be one from
which riches can be mined.
PAGING MR. MCGUIRE -- Readers of Bruce Barnett's Electronic Grymoire (EG) have lately
been enjoying some wonderful reminiscences of Dai Vernon by contributor Mike Perovich. In
private correspondence, Mike and I recalled another fine magician of the Magic Castle/1970 era
named Mark McGuire. Mr. McGuire was only 18 at the time, but entertained wonderfully in the
Close-up Gallery with nothing but a shuffled deck of cards. His routines linger in the memory to
this day, and I wonder what became of him. Anyone who knows is invited to write in.
MOVIE MAGIC -- In his December 1996 product review column in MAGIC, Mike Close called
our attention to a delightful book by Chuck Jones, the celebrated director of numerous Bugs
Bunny and friends cartoons, called Chuck Reducks. In addition to being a highly entertaining
piece of writing by an 84-year-old kid, this book lets the reader in on the details -- the magic
secrets, if you will -- of what made those cartoons both believable and funny. Thanks in part to
Mike's recommendation, Chuck Reducks was one of the niftier gifts under my tree this
Christmas. (And by the way, it's not the same Chuck Jones that created the "Mis-Made Girl.")
Along the same lines, another terrific book, brimming with secrets, is Walt Disney Imagineering
(A Behind the Dreams Look at Making the Magic Real). This oversized coffee table book takes
the reader behind the scenes of the various Disney theme parks around the world, from original
artists' conceptions to large-scale construction projects. The closest parallel I can think of is the
excellent article Stan Allen wrote a few years ago on Disney's Haunted Mansion. If you are a
Disney fan, you'll find it hard to live without this one. It contains some of the most beautiful
Disney photo coverage and artwork I've seen, along with surprise inserts and foldouts, and
revealing text by the Disney Imagineers themselves. $50 from Hyperion, available at your local
bookseller.
MYSTERIES EXPLAINED -- In early January, Penn and Teller appeared on NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Following some entertaining teasers, in which they did the cups and balls backstage as a
gambling scam, successfully separating the likes of Kathy Ireland from items of apparel, the Bad
Boys of Magic came out front and did their entire How-the-Cups and Balls-Is-Done/The Magic
Castle-Will-Hate-Us routine, using clear cups and revealing the final loads of large balls and a
potato. Ah, perhaps this will take some of the heat off Mac King.
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Copyright© 1997 by Steve Bryant