Copperfield combines spectacle, simple magic
Reprinted from late editions of Saturday's Globe.
A David Copperfield performance is all about the presentation.
After 30 years of creating increasingly jaw-dropping illusions - including his well-publicized Statue of Liberty disappearance, his walk through the Great Wall of China, or his float over the Grand Canyon - the master illusionist has settled into a comfortable ease with his audience and his work. But don't worry, he hasn't lost his ability to surprise and confound. He returns to Boston for the first time in two years with his show, "An Intimate Evening of Grand Illusion," which opened Friday night at the Opera House, and he delivers on his oddly contradictory combination of "intimate" and "grand."
Copperfield creates the atmosphere of intimacy by encouraging audience participation from the moment he makes his dramatic appearance onstage, in a box, on a motorcycle. He's a master at engaging the audience, whether that means clapping along with him or volunteering to be a part the act. He even goes into the audience to perform a lovely trick with a piece of tissue paper right in the aisle. Although the facts and figures that appear onscreen before the show ("Largest amount of money earned by a magician," "21 Emmy awards," "only living magician to appear on postage stamps") seems a little gratuitous, and the film at the beginning of the show touting his status as a cultural icon (with clips from all the shows where his name and talent is invoked) overdoes it, Copperfield's charming and oh-so-relaxed delivery (even when he delivers the lamest jokes) balance the hype.
The pace of the show is very clever, with simpler familiar tricks set off by the jaw-dropping, unexpected ones. After appearing on the motorcycle, Copperfield wastes no time proving he can float through solid steel and squeeze himself into a tiny box. He also includes such old chestnuts as disappearing from one box and appearing somewhere else, or a classic card trick; he adds some clever twists to give them a surprising freshness. Repeating the disappearing trick in slow motion, or complicating a card trick by having a lethal black African scorpion choose the card the volunteer selected, elicits the required gasps.
But just because he's relaxed, doesn't mean he's slacking off, and Copperfield includes a wonderful illusion called "The Lottery," in which he recalls his grandfather's eagerness to win the Irish Sweepstakes so that he could buy a brand-new Lincoln.
When the numbers he predicts turn out to be the numbers random audience members have also selected, not only does the audience gasp as the mathematical probability, but they cheer when the car he says his grandfather dreamed of appears onstage.
The show climaxes with the disappearance of 13 audience members who appear almost instantly at the back of the orchestra seats. It's a fitting finish for a mix of high-tech effects and simple magic tricks. Copperfield's technical wizardry has been an attempt to bring magic into the 21st century. But at their heart, the illusions rely on the audience's willingness to suspend their disbelief and go along for the ride. The skill of his distractions is not so much in his ability to trick the audience's eyes but to engage their imagination and that is something he knows how to do. 