NEW YORK—One thing that’s usually part and parcel of any magic show is an air of quiet mystery that envelopes the magician. It’s as if they alone are privy to certain mystical secrets—secrets they will use to confound, mystify, and ultimately delight their audiences. This is definitely not the case with “Mind Mangler: A Night of Tragic Illusion.”
“Tragic,” we are told, is actually a typo. (It’s supposed to say “Magic.”) The work, which can best be described as “catastrophically entertaining,” and written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields, can now be seen at New World Stages.
The Mind Mangler (Lewis) is a bombastic sort who exudes overconfidence from every pore. He claims to be so in tune with the powers of the mind that he is a human lie detector. His olfactory abilities are so powerful, he can use his sense of smell to deduce a person’s occupation. In addition, his tasting prowess allows him to determine people’s first names. He can also use his ultra-keen sense of hearing to learn the thoughts of a deck of playing cards.
He explains that he has used different stage names earlier in his career. At least one of these he dropped because a past performance did not go off as planned.
It soon becomes apparent that, despite all his hubris, the Mind Mangler’s current act is also not going the way he hopes. He mislays certain key materials before the show has even started; his predictions are constantly wrong; and he ends up revealing far more of his own secrets than anything he claims to have discovered about the audience.
This is, of course, the point as the production takes many of the tropes commonly associated with magic shows and gleefully turns them on their head. Where most magicians, when making predictions, start out with one or two general observations and then home in on the answer, Lewis’s character just keeps going further afield with his queries. His attempts often collapse into spirited back and forth with the audience when their responses don’t match his conjectures.
Master of Mishap
Lewis, whose appearance calls to mind a cross between Orson Welles and Penn Jillette, and who proves to be a master of the slow burn, is perfect as an inept magician: He has to spoon-feed clues to the audience in an attempt to get them to say what he wants.Actually, his efforts are a riff on the subliminal techniques many professional magicians use in their routines. Lewis’s self-deprecating manner makes his outbursts more comical than mean and more woebegone than menacing. As such, even though he always seems primed to fall flat on his face, one can’t help but wish for him to succeed.
In the end, it is the Mind Mangler who has the last laugh. Mixed in among the mistakes, miscues and misfires are feats of magic—one involving Rubiks Cubes—that come off as perfectly planned (although somewhat belatedly). He accomplishes this feat thanks to some very good sleight of hand and some even better misdirection. Each successful trick has the audience wondering just how he pulled it off.
Sayer is excellent as the seemingly befuddled Stooge. He’s a fellow who oftentimes seems to have more on the ball than the Mind Mangler himself. The sequences between the two involving a Ouija Board and a disappearing pocket watch are particularly amusing.
While quite funny, the show does tend to drag at points, particularly during the second act. This problem of letting a certain gag go on for too long has turned up in some of the other shows by the creative team. It’s a case of trying to cover too much ground instead of ending things with the audience wanting more. Hannah Sharkey’s direction works well, but is stymied when it comes to these few dead spots in the production.
Despite these occasional weak moments, “Mind Mangler: A Night of Tragic Illusion” positively proves to be anything but, and is an entertaining experience for people of all ages.
