The Magic Show

Preview:	May 16, 1974		Total Previews:
Opening:	May 28, 1974
Closing:	Dec 31, 1978		Total Performances:	1920

Category: Musical, Original, Broadway
Description: A musical in one act

Opening in 1974 at the Cort Theatre, The Magic Show enjoyed a four and a half-year run on Broadway with 1859 (or 1920 depending on which source you read) performances. This musical featured Doug Henning's magic, Stephen Schwartz's songs, and a book by Bob Randall. Audiences loved the show and Doug was nominated for a Tony award for his performance.

Here's a "Reader's Digest" type plot summary that someone wrote:

The setting for the show is a seedy nightclub, the Top Hat, where an aging alcoholic magician "Feldman the Magnificent," an overly grand performer. Manny the Top Hat owner wants to replace him. Because he is drunk all the time, the Manny brings in Doug Henning's character, also named Doug. Well, he is very unconventional as far as magicians go, as Feldman points this out in "Style."

Doug has this assistant named Cal who is quite a chatterbox. She is in love with Doug, but he is focused on advancing his career and pays little attention to her. She sings that she'd like to be a "Lion Tamer," in order to get him to notice. Donna and Dina are the rock act in the club. One of them dates the nephew of a big agent named Goldfarb. Goldfarb is coming to the club to check out Donna and Dina as a favor to the nephew. Everyone is excited, especially Feldman.

Meanwhile, Doug realizes he needs a beautiful assistant. Cal gets mad, as if to say, "what am I, chopped liver?". She tells him she's just going to go back to West End Avenue. Doug is busy conjuring up the beautiful Charmin.

Charmin says when Goldfarb gets a look at her, it's Doug's act that he will love. Donna and Dina get worried, and along with Feldman, plot to expose the secrets to Doug's tricks during the show. They fail. Doug realizes he loves Cal, and gets to her before she leaves. Charmin is sent back to wherever she came from. Feldman tries to do an act with Donna and Dina. Happy ending!

SLIP & RIFFLE

The magician shuffles and cuts the deck, riffles through it asking a spectator to say Stop, and when the spectator does so the card selected at random is the one the magician planned on.

Slip & Riffle employs a novel Slip Cut combined with a Riffle Force. It allows the spectator to take the top, face down card of the bottom stack when the deck is cut at the riffle stop point. The Slip Cut used is based on a Stanley Collins move with a turn over of the hands added to obscure the fact that the deck is not cut at all.

Setup

The force card is the top card of the face down deck.

Handling

The deck is given an overhand shuffle without disturbing the top card. Do this by taking the deck in the right hand, the deck face up, moving it to the left hand so one long edge of the cards rests on the left palm, then pulling bunches of cards out of the center of the deck and dropping them on face of card. This leaves the top force card in place. Then proceed with the handling.

Performance Notes

The illusion of the deck being cut and the cut completed is quite good considering the deck isn't cut at all. The tilting of the hands down to the right, then back up to the left completely covers the fact that the top stock is lifted off and then put back on top after the left finger tips have slipped the top card from the top of the deck to the top of the bottom stock.

The advantage of this easy handling in combination with the riffle force is that the spectator takes a face down card rather than being shown the bottom card of the top stock as the card to remember.

In working this the cards should be held loosely in the hands as if they are being tossed back and forth in the course of overhand shuffling and cutting them.

pickpocket - robert bresson

Robert Bresson's Pickpocket has many great moments, even as it didn't quite do it for me on a first viewing as a 'masterpiece (some have said to see it twice, perhaps I will). Bresson's use of the camera is often intoxicating in the most subdued of ways; at times it does take on the prowess of literature. But my only minor nitpick with the film is that it leaves a sort of cold viewing on a viewer, with such simplicity and emotions stripped from the character(s) that it's hard to connect. And yet, this is really made up tenfold with the sort of style that can be likely called Bressonian; straightforward angles, tense medium close-ups, serene editing, and little to no music.

Whatever it sets up for this actor to do, it sets up well. Indeed, the actor who plays the protagonist here is actually very good, aside from the disconnection, and provides an excellent way for us to get along his side. He is a decent person, but there are certain things that get to him, which is why he feels he must steal. At times I almost had a grin as he made some successful grabs, by himself or his cohorts. Was I rooting for him, or just pleased by the pay-off of Bresson's suspense? Maybe both; there is definitely one truly virtuoso sequence in the film, when the pickpockets go on the train.

Picking Pocket

Picking pockets is a crime, a form of larceny which involves the stealing of money and valuables from the person of a victim without their noticing the theft at the time. It requires considerable dexterity and a knack for misdirection. Someone who picks pockets is known as a pickpocket.

Pickpockets and other thieves, especially those working in teams, sometimes apply distraction, such as asking a question, bumping into the victim, or deliberately dirtying the victim's clothing and then "helping" him/her to clean it.

The crime used to be punishable by death – even though public hangings were considered prime targets for pickpockets. William Shakespeare referenced this in his play The Winter's Tale, where the rogue and pickpocket Autolycus observes,