Originally published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, 29 January, 2025
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That’s a pretty broad
question. Let’s refine it a little, so it can be answered with a simple yes or
no. Do you believe in magic as a form of entertainment?
To that question my
answer is an enormous yes. At its best, magic is a thrilling blend of creative
ingenuity and consummate technical skill. There’s no show I’d rather go to than
a good magic show.
Some people, who
otherwise strike me as quite intelligent and decent, tell me they’re not into
magic. A friend of mine was recently heard to remark that magic “just isn’t my
thing.”
I find this attitude
baffling. How can magic not be your thing? Magic is magic, for crying
out loud. It’s a byword for delight. If you think you don’t like it, maybe it’s
because you’ve never seen a first-rate magician perform.
Consider Penn &
Teller, the superlative American magicians who are currently touring Australia.
I’ve been lucky enough to see these brilliant men play the Sydney Opera House
twice now – first in the winter of 2022, when Australia was still staggering
out of its Covid hibernation, and again in January this year.
I would say, without the
slightest hesitation, that those two shows were the most exhilarating and mind-expanding
nights I’ve ever spent in a theatre. Penn & Teller are supreme masters of
their craft, to say the least. But I would go further. I’d say they are creative
artists of the highest order.
In the 2022 show, Teller
performed his masterpiece, a show-stopping routine called “Shadows.” If you’ve
never had the privilege of seeing this sublime creation unfold in a theatre,
you can watch Teller perform it on YouTube.
But that is a poor
substitute for seeing it live. When Teller executed the trick’s final move at
the Opera House, the effect was literally breathtaking. You heard the sound of 1,500
people all gasping at once.
When I recall that moment
now, I find myself getting a little choked up. The climax of that trick was no
less moving than a great line of poetry, or a soaring phrase of music.
In Penn & Teller’s
current show there’s a mind-bending number called “Entropy”, which is less a
trick than a happening, a genuinely weird incursion into the laws of space and
time. It’s a radically original piece of art, as intellectually frisky and
audacious as a Stoppard play. Watching it unfold, you feel the world being
taken apart and remade in front of your eyes.
Great magic renovates
your brain, as all true art does. It takes your mind on a wild ride. It expands
your sense of what human beings can do when they put their minds to it.
In the 2022 show, Penn
did a hair-raising routine with a nail gun. It looked phenomenally dangerous. But
he was at pains to reassure the audience – which contained many children – that
he would never be so crass as to endanger his life on stage. There was a secret
to what he was doing up there. He wanted us to know that, even if he wasn’t about
to tell us what the secret was.
Penn & Teller do
things on stage that seem to defy rational explanation. But just because you
can’t see the rational explanation doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Like all
honest magicians, Penn & Teller don’t claim to possess psychic or supernatural
powers. Far from it. These are tricks, Penn repeatedly stresses on
stage. Their outcome is carefully controlled. No other result is possible.
The best magicians don’t
just entertain us. They educate us. They’re rationalist warriors, who immunise
us against metaphysical charlatans by demonstrating that the physical world is
far more rich and strange than we previously thought.
There’s a long tradition
of this in magic. In the 1920s, Harry Houdini denounced the spiritualist
mediums who were taking the post-war world by storm. These people were just
jumped-up magicians, Houdini said. Their work was “a fraud from start to
finish.” In the 1970s, the Amazing Randi waged a similar campaign of
demystification against the purported psychic Uri Geller.
At the bottom of most
magic tricks lies some relatively simple physical mechanism: a sleight of hand,
a moment of misdirection. The beauty of great magic – and I use the word beauty
in its fullest sense – lies in the artistry with which these mechanisms are concealed.
Robert Hughes, the
Australian art critic, once explained the simple philosophy underlying his
appreciation of art. “I love the spectacle of skill,” he wrote.
That’s what great magic delivers,
in a strikingly pure form: the spectacle of skill. If you ever get a chance to
see a master magician perform, take it. You won’t regret it. If you do, you may
need to check your pulse.
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