Does David Copperfield Care About His Show? — Introducing Claudette Merrow

I don’t see much live magic. It’s just not my thing. Just because I love sharing tricks with people in real life doesn’t mean I want to sit in a theater and watch someone else do it. I don’t know why this surprises some people. It would be like saying, “You like making jokes and laughing with your friends, right? Well, then you must want to go see Sister Act: The Musical!”

That said, I do enjoy reading about shows. As long as it’s a legitimate review and not some Genii puff piece.

I’m not interested in hearing someone trash a show just for the sake of trashing it, but I do like to get a genuine feel for the experience.

With that said, I’d like to introduce a new voice to The Jerx: famed theater critic, Claudette Merrow.

Claudette has been reviewing theater for fifty-five years, her work appearing in more publications than you can name. Many of us fondly remember her most famous recurring columns: Under the Lights, Curtain Call, Center Stage, The Footlight Files, Scene & Heard, Notes from the Balcony, Two Drinks into Intermission, Coughing in the Mezzanine, I Lost My Virginity to Mandy Patinkin, The Concession Stand Is Out of Bit-O-Honeys, and, of course, There’s Cum on This Seat, her uncomfortably thorough coverage of Times Square’s porn theaters.

I met Claudette at a Mennonite orgy last spring and told her she could write magic show reviews for this site if she ever felt inclined. I don’t know if this will be a one-off or the start of something recurring, but here’s her take on Copperfield’s current Las Vegas show.

[For anyone who has seen the show, please scroll to the end for a quick poll.]

In September I visited Las Vegas for the first time in my life. My married friends Emily and Greg wished to renew their wedding vows and wanted to do so in a kitschy way, and Vegas seems the perfect place. It was really more like a group vacation that happened to have a wedding element, and served as a reunion for some friends we hadn't seen in person for quite a while (one going on almost ten years).

Being people who mostly resist the kinds of things Las Vegas is known for, we decided to indulge in stereotypical tourist activities for the experience. We went to the Bellagio fountains, had our pictures taken with showgirls, ate at several buffets, played (and lost) at several gambling tables, and took in some big Vegas shows. And Vegas being the home of many big name magicians, the obvious choice for a magic show was David Copperfield.

Now I raised my kids on his TV specials, and I even saw him live once when he was on tour back in the 90s. His style of magic is not to my particular taste, but I always appreciated his enthusiasm for what he was doing, cheesy as it may have been. I went into this new show thinking it would be a fun throwback, not amazing but certainly worth the time spent. I came out thinking something else, which is the title of my review:

Does David Copperfield Give Even the Littlest Shit About His Show Anymore?

Upon first arrival, the answer to that question would appear to be yes, given the number of signs that prohibit photographs and videos, and add the unnecessary note that the show and its contents are copyrighted. Before the show starts there is a verbal announcement, warning us that we will be ejected if we are caught with a recording device. Everyone is instructed to turn off their phones and place them into boxes located at our tables. This is to keep them out of sight and prevent us from using them at all during the evening. That sounds like something that someone who cares about and wants to protect his show would do, but that feeling changes right away.

Just before David is brought on stage, we are asked to turn our cell phones back on and send an email to a special address with our hometown so they can populate a map of the audience. Making us go through the trouble of putting our phones away only to immediately ask us to use them is very disrespectful. I'm already bothered at this point and literally nothing has happened yet. Their rules are no pictures, but nobody said anything about writing a review.

David arrives via his appearing motorcycle illusion. This is a great start, and exactly what I came here for: a magician hopelessly stuck in an era long past. I know that sounds disparaging, but I'm being honest. I want that nostalgic cheese. It's the purpose of the entire trip.

But the show itself has a nostalgia theme, and that's clashing with what I came for. David is looking back on his life, telling us about his childhood and his relationship with his father, which is sweet and all, but it's not "hey I think I'm still cool enough to ride a motorcycle."

And I'm willing to follow him on this journey into his personal past, but the way he addresses the audience prevents this. He speaks quietly, often mumbling, and very fast. The impression I get is that he is running a tech rehearsal of the show. "Say my line, say my line, point, cue illusion, take a bow, stagehands set up the next illusion, repeat." He does have interactions with the audience, but it really feels like he's running on autopilot. It's as if spending so many years with high tech illusions has caused him to change into an automaton himself. There are only two moments where he seemed to be alive and present, which were jokes about tariffs on China and one about RFK, Jr - I feel it's because they are the only new jokes to be added in years (the next newest jokes are about Covid, and everything else is solidly vintage). I'd be all for the old tired jokes being used if they were delivered with strange enthusiasm instead of tired apathy. I pretty quickly got the sad impression that David doesn't love magic anymore.

As for the tricks themselves, they are competently executed, but the variety is lacking. Appearing motorcycle, appearing car, appearing spaceship, appearing dinosaur. Each is impressive, but they are all essentially the same trick. There are three tricks which are a prediction on printed matter. Not even a mentalist would do that in a show. And then there's a transposition trick using an audience member.

Sorry, that needs quotes: using an "audience member."

Obvious plant is obvious, and there are quite a few used in the show. At some point David learned that if you want to use a duplicate person, it's good to dress them up in very recognizable clothing, like a loud Hawaiian shirt. That's great for duplicates, but not for regular stooges. Even the people who are only there to encourage the crowd by calling out suggestions when asked, or clapping, or leading a standing ovation are blatantly attired.

The bulk of the show is dedicated to an alien, which I will say right off the bat is a highly impressive bit of technology. But the script for that section is incredibly schmaltzy, even by Copperfield standards. It feels like someone wrote a spec script to get hired as a Disney screenwriter, was rejected, and repurposed it for this show. It might work better if David delivered his lines with any kind of motivation that is not "get to the next part."

Everything about this show is preprogrammed to run exactly the same way every time, and it feels like a Disneyland ride more than a magic show. It's just so fake. Even moments that should seem real - like when he shows photographs of his parents - end up becoming obvious actors hired to play the part. The audience did not seem particularly enthusiastic, apart from the plants of course. I think if it were actually an amusement park show that community theater kids run every hour audiences would appreciate it more. But as a DAVID COPPERFIELD EXPERIENCE, it is sorely lacking.

If he happened to be ill the night I saw him I'd understand, but I've spoken with many people since and everyone who has seen the show the past few years has had the same experience.

All in all this is a terrible disappointment, and just sad, particularly because he is clearly not happy to be there. That made two of us.

—Claudette M.

---

Ouch, Claudette! That’s harsh. Personally, I only have positive memories of David’s live performances. But I haven’t seen him in 30 years.

But, I’m curious, have you seen Copperfield’s current show? If so, what’s your take?

I just want to get a sense of what the general consensus is. Is it worth the trip to Vegas? If 90% of people say it’s great or terrible, I’ll probably go—I’m always up for seeing either a masterpiece or a trainwreck. But if it lands somewhere in the middle, I’ll probably skip it.

And look, to be fair, if the show isn’t that good—well, he’s a 70-year-old billionaire. It wouldn’t shock me if he’s lost a bit of the hunger to create something truly transcendent. And Vegas tends to turn a lot of performers into people just coasting toward the finish line.

But I’ll always have a soft spot for David. His yearly magic specials were one of the few sources of magic we had back then. Think about that. You could easily go a whole year without seeing a single other bit of magic on TV, or anywhere else for that matter. No wonder those shows meant so much to those of us who were young and interested in magic at the time.

For that reason, I hope Copperfield doesn’t go out with a whimper. Come on, David! Scrap the current show and start fresh. Build something new and take it to Broadway for a few months. Put some pressure on yourself to perform in a city where people actually care about the theatrical experience.

“But I’m old, and winding things down.”

No! Stop it. That’s nonsense and I don’t want to hear it. You’re just going to give up? What…a 70-year-old with more money and success than he knows what to do with can’t reinvent himself? Can’t find the inspiration and drive to create the best, most relevant work of his life? He just has to fade into irrelevance? Why? Because that’s the way it always goes? Disgusting. And here I thought you believed in magic.

Spirit Coffin

Penguin and Nate Kranzo released a new effect called The Spirit Coffin.

The ad copy says:

“The Spirit Slates have been a traditional prop in spiritualism and bizarre magic for decades, but modern audiences have little reference for chalkboards in an age of screens.”

Good point.

And in the video for the product, Nate says:

“The Spirit Slates have always been a kind of unnatural prop for me.”

Yes! Finally we can replace those weird old Spirit Slates with something more modern, more relatable, more in tune with the times.

Something like… hmmm… I don’t know… a mini chalkboard coffin?

Now, look—I think this is a fun idea for a prop. But let’s not pretend this is a more normal or organic upgrade to the typical Spirit Slates. Sure, maybe small chalkboards aren’t as common as they were 100 years ago, but they’re infinitely more common than a mini coffin you write in with chalk. In fact, most people would say the latter isn’t something that exists.

Some of those endorsements are wild, too. The essence of most of them is, “Ugh, finally someone upgraded those stupid Spirit Slates and put them in a coffin like we’ve all been hoping for.”

Marc DeSouza says this is “such a natural prop.” Ah yes, so “natural.” Honey, the magician just pulled out a mini chalkboard coffin. Like the ones we use at the veterinary clinic to give the hamsters a proper Christian burial.

Again, I don’t dislike the prop—I just think trying to advertise it as more relatable than the normal Spirit Slates is dumb.

Maybe they figured they couldn’t get away with saying, “It’s like the traditional Spirit Slates, just even less recognizable.”

Here’s the thing…once you start pulling out a coffin of any size to do a trick with, we can stop pretending that relatability is the quality you’re trying to maximize in your performance.

You’re doing some goofball magic nonsense. At that point, just own it.

Mailbag #152

I really enjoyed “Out of the Minds of Babes” this week. I had my first child earlier this year (he’s seven months now), and I’ve been playing with baby inspired presentations like using the Little Hand during my wife’s pregnancy to send a “Can’t wait to meet you mommy” note, or doing The Baby Who Knows with a thumper. Have you written more about this theme, or do you have other baby related presentations you can point me to? I was thinking of doing something with a haunted deck by briefly leaving a deck in his large crib but not entirely sure how to present it if we can’t “see the baby cutting to the card”, maybe just leaving him safely alone for a minute might work and when we return “he found the card”. —GM

I think you've identified most of my writing on using kids in performances. Also check out “Kids and Animals” in the JAMM #7.

I like the haunted deck idea. If you have a baby monitor camera, it might be fun to set him on the floor with the deck, leave the room for a few seconds, come back and the deck is cut to the card. "How does he do that? Wait, let's check the mentor." And the deck is seen to cut itself. You can then spin that into either, Our baby's room is haunted. Or, I think he cut the deck with his mind.

---

A couple months ago [Joe Rogan]  had Oz Perlman on his show and it went pretty viral, specifically because Oz guessed Joe's ATM PIN. 

It was an interesting interview but Oz Perlman has always rubbed me the wrong way and I finally figured out why. 

The problem I have with Oz, and many mentalists, is that they're never "off". I know you talk about blurring the line between when the performance ends and normal life begins but a lot of mentalists do it differently and I'm not sure how to describe it. I know a lot of mentalists do genuinely get good at cold reading and picking up on micro-expressions.

But Oz (and many other mentalists) do this thing that bugs me where they present themselves as a master of reading people. And a lot of them talk about magic tricks like that was an immature phase of playing around with "tricks" and "props" but now they've graduated into the "real thing", which feels very disingenuous to me. 

Anyway, I was just kind of wondering what you think. I feel conflicted because I do like your approach of kind of blurring the line between performance and your day to day life but I feel like there's a line between your approach (which is essentially like an immersive fiction), and just straight up claiming that you're a master of reading body language and that you've moved beyond "simple tricks". —AO

Yes, to be clear, when I talk about blurring the line between magic and real life, I don’t mean blurring the fact that it’s a trick. I mean making the magic feel more naturally woven into your interactions so it doesn’t live behind a glass wall labeled “Now I’m doing a trick.” Instead, the edges of performance and reality overlap a bit so moments of genuine interaction become part of the trick, and elements of the trick spill back into normal conversation. I think that kind of integration makes for richer experiences. But the goal isn’t to fool anyone into thinking it isn’t a trick—it’s just to make the trick feel more vital.

And I, too, will tell people that what they’re seeing is something “beyond” simple tricks. Unlike Oz, when I do it i’m trying to remove myself from the equation. I want people to engage with a more fantastical idea than that what they’re watching is just sleight-of-hand.

Perhaps if I was approaching strangers and doing this, you could say I was lying to them. But the people I perform for understand this is a way of framing the experience and setting the stage so they can buy in as much as they want. I’m not expecting them to walk away saying, “I just experienced a 100% genuine demonstration of a procedure that induced déjà vu.” But by letting these experiences grow out of normal, genuine human interactions, there is a feeling that maybe they can’t dismiss everything as “just a trick.” That’s where I like to leave the people I perform for: knowing it’s most likely a trick, but never able to be 100% certain—always toying with their belief in some small recess of their brain.

As for what Oz does…. I haven’t watched the interview you reference, or much of his other work. But if it’s as you suggest, then yes, it’s just essentially lying. Couching your presentations in semi-believable premises is fine to do in performance. But it’s weird when people take that “off stage.” You could argue that an interview like that IS a performance, and this is just him being “in character.” Okay. Sure. But is he just… never out of character in public situations? If so, that’s not a character, that’s a persona you’ve adopted and you kind of have to live a lie.

Magicians eat that stuff up. Like the guy who spent decades pretending to be Chung Ling Soo when he was really just some American whitey. Magicians romanticize that kind of commitment. They don’t understand it’s the life of a sad psychopath. Smearing on greasepaint every day because you don’t think the real you is enough? That’s not admirable, it’s bleak.

But again, I don’t give a shit. Sure, the premise is retarded: “I can tell by your body language you’re thinking of your Aunt… Suzie!” It’s like, huh? How the fuck would that work? Saying “body language” is the equivalent of saying, “now I wave my magic wand.” It’s a way of expressing you just want to get on with the trick. It can work in corporate-esque performance environments where no one expects you to show too much of a personality anyway.

But be wary of doing stuff like this as an amateur in social situations. If you try to present yourself in your life as someone who’s really reading body language, or truly psychic, or an incredible card mechanic, or a brilliant psychological manipulator, and someone figures out a trick you do, it ruins your whole persona. You’ll come off as a total dork.

Someone can figure out a trick I do, and it might ruin the trick or lessen the experience. But it doesn’t completely undermine who I portray myself to be. There’s a great comfort in that.

Dustings #133

An addendum to yesterday’s post…

When reading through it before hitting publish, I deliberately changed this line:

Touch the deck as little as possible.

to this:

Touch the deck as little as necessary.

You may have a trick where you just need to make one small adjustment to the deck mid-trick, but otherwise it’s completely hands-off. In that case, you wouldn’t want to take the deck, do your move, and immediately hand it back—that puts too much heat on that one moment when you’re holding the deck. Instead, you’d want to handle the deck only as much as needed for the trick to be fooling. In this example, that would mean touching it a couple of other times during the routine so the one time you do your move doesn’t stick out.

It’s not an absolute rule to touch the deck as little as possible, but rather as seldom as necessary for the deception to work.

I see magicians who want the deck in their hands almost like a security blanket so they can riffle the edges or spring the cards. Or they have a compulsion to square and straighten every pile a spectator deals. These are the sorts of things I’m suggesting you avoid.

---

When you’re recording your friends to get them to be fake amazed by your magic trick, make sure you let them know what part they’re supposed to be amazed by.

The girl on the right is astonished that he can poke a pen through a dollar bill. That’s not the magic part, you goofy bitch! She actually seems less impressed by the trick itself.

---

If you had a bet with Craig Petty about who could make the nerdiest YouTube video, pay up.

Stop Touching the Fucking Cards

You would think this would be the first thing magicians understand about card magic, which is why it’s so bizarre to me when magicians violate this seemingly obvious rule:

Touch the deck as little as necessary.

I constantly see magicians:

• taking the deck back unnecessarily

• squaring up packets

• dealing through the cards themselves to “speed up the process”

• shuffling “for” the spectators

• spreading the cards in a nice ribbon spread for a selection

In casual performing situations, these things don’t add anything to the procedure and instead detract greatly from the impact of an effect.

Every time you touch the deck you are—from the audience’s perspective—potentially doing something underhanded. And that’s most of what people know about card tricks: the magician touches the deck and does something stealthy.

Now, you might say, “But I’m clearly not doing anything. I’m just squaring the pile of cards.”

1. Regular people don’t know that. They suspect that sleight of hand is probably meant to look like nothing. So the fact that they don’t see you do something doesn’t mean they don’t think you might have done something.

2. Spectators don’t have a video camera in their head that records everything perfectly. They don’t necessarily remember how “cleanly” you handled the deck when you handled it. All they remember is that you did touch the deck at times.

Here’s a specific example…

Last week, I mentioned John Bannon’s 51 Fat Chances as a good “Failsafe Trick.”

In looking for a performance of it on YouTube, I stumbled across this person’s version.

51 Fat Chances is a trick that can be done more or less entirely in the spectator’s hands.

Yet he keeps taking the deck, spreading through the cards, giving them back to the spectator, taking them back… to the point where there is essentially no trick anymore—certainly not if you look at the spectator’s reaction.

When you perform casually, you want to do whatever you can to touch the deck as seldom as possible—even if that means the trick ends up being sloppier or slower than it would be otherwise.

It’s easy to forget that a layperson’s understanding of the “trickery” in card magic is mostly that the magician is going to do something sneaky when they touch the deck. They have less of an understanding about procedural sneakiness or obscure mathematical methodologies, so they’re less on the lookout for such things.

That’s not to say a self-working trick is always going to be better than a sleight-of-hand trick. I’m just saying you don’t want to give them an answer as to how something might be done by playing into their knowledge of methods and allowing them to brush something off as sleight of hand.

“I’m not going to touch the deck at all” is one of the strongest conditions you can place on a trick. Don’t undermine it unnecessarily.

Pop & Lack

It’s rare for me to dip into the archives, but I heard that our old pal, Keith Lack, is selling some of his Pop Eye units over on Facebook.

Always one to help Keith out when I can, I thought I would repost my enthusiastic promotion of this product from 21 years ago on my old site.

The notion that struck me back then was from the advertising copy which emphasized the possibilities with this.

Pulling your eye from its socket actually struck me as a fairly specific effect—which tends to limit the “possibilities” for a trick.

But the advertising was so seductive. “Nothing comes in contact with your actual eyeball.  No adhesives used of any kind.” So I don’t have to hot glue the gimmick to my cornea? 🤔 Ok, now I’m intrigued.

With that knowledge, I focused my mind and realized Keith was correct. This is a gimmick with unlimited possibilities.

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From June 7th, 2004

Magicians are a savvy bunch, and as such, they're always on the lookout for the next big utility gimmick. Oh sure, you can stun the pants of the ladies with one-trick-wonders like Color Monte or Milk to Light bulb, but the true bang for your buck comes from the gimmicks you can use for multiple effects like the thumbtip, the Raven, Xpert, and of course, Slush powder. 

Well, get ready, because now you too can harness the awesome power of the most versatile utility gimmick since the thumbtip .

As the ad copy says, "The possibilities are limited only by your strange imagination."

Oh yes, the possibilities. Think of all the wonderful, varied tricks you could accomplish with this gimmick. Here are just a few ideas: 

1. Pull your eyeball away from your head.
2. Pull your head away from your eyeball.
3. Pull both your head and your eyeball equidistant from an imaginary midpoint.

...among other possibilities too numerous to get into and too obvious to warrant mentioning. 

And think of all the patter possibilities! Why, anytime you need to say the word eye, or even the word I, you can unleash a magical moment of astonishment. For example: 

"Keep your finger on that card and don't move it. I have my eye on you." [Yank out your eyeball.]

or

When performing for the elderly. "I don't know about you, Old Man Periwinkle, but I can barely tell these cards apart from this distance. Let's take a closer look." [Yank out your eyeball.’

or

"Boy, I really wish I saved my $80." [Yank out your eyeball.]

I prefer to use this in my birthday clown shows as misdirection for the knuckle-busting move in my Forgetful Freddie routine. (By the way, I use my Forgetful Freddie routine to teach kids about the joys of forgetting. In particular, forgetting the way I caressed the birthday-boy's sweet, tender buttocks while his mom was in the other room scooping ice-cream.)

When performing for an adult crowd, I like to get into this effect by telling a touching story about the first time I saw snow. You see, when I was growing up, my family would spend the winters with my grandparents in Florida. These were wonderful times, but I never got to experience snow because we would always leave New York before the first snowfall and return after it had all melted. But then, when I was seven, my father needed to stay in New York a bit longer than usual on business. And one cold November night as I looked out my window, I saw these beautiful white crystals falling from the sky. It was the most amazing thing I ever saw. I ran outside in my bare feet and twirled around in the falling snow. I was so awed by the spectacle of nature's majesty that my eyeball popped out of my fucking skull!

(Now, I realize that by so generously divulging my presentations to you, I could be in danger of someone stealing my routines, but that's a risk I'm willing to take if it gets people's creative juices flowing.)

And for those of you that like to do magic tricks to pick up women, I can't think of anything more romantic than getting two of these things and yanking them out of your head as you stare at some girl's tits. She'll really be flattered.

I applaud Keith Lack for doing something different and putting out some unique products. I'm particularly looking forward to August when he is going to release "Bust A Nut" which is an effect where you pull your nutsack out through your zipper and tug and squeeze it until one of your balls apparently rips through your sack and dangles from the epididymis. It's a worker.

A Paper Gameboard Tweak

Based on the emails i got, people seemed to enjoy Quinta idea I posted last month, The Paper Gameboard.

I really like your concept for creating the paper gameboard for the Quinta force. You're right, it definitely smooths out some of the rough points of the force. I know there are people who use Quinta all the time, but something about just using the counting procedure to make a selection between 5 objects always seemed a little contrived to me. But this idea gives it motivation and makes the procedure more engaging.

That was the start of an email from reader Ryan M. He then went on to offer a tweak to the procedure that eliminates the need for the Paul Harris Pointer Anomaly Principle… or whatever it’s called.

What Ryan discovered (maybe discovered is the wrong word, maybe this is obvious to people, but I hadn’t thought of it) is that an arrow is naturally equivocal.

An arrow can be seen as pointing to the starting point OR pointing in the direction the game piece should move. Both make perfect sense.

There are a couple of ways you could do this.

Verbally

This was my first thought, based on what Ryan suggested in his email.

I would introduce the arrow and the balled up piece of paper.

“The arrow will be used as a spinner, to determine which direction we start moving from. The ball is going to be a 50-sided die. But you’ll use your imagination to determine what actual number it rolls.”

That first sentence seems to make sense at this point, although if you really examine it, you’ll see it’s not exactly clear. But nobody will ever notice that because you’re immediately telling them this wadded up paper ball is 50-sided die. That’s more interesting than the previous sentence.

After “rolling the die,” you can have them spin the arrow freely (I would still probably have them do this face-down) and they can turn it over however they want.

You now say one of the following two things:

1. Okay, so we’ll move in that direction. And the number of moves was what again?

   or

2. Okay, so we’ll start from that side. And the number of moves was what again?

Both sentences make sense with what you said originally about the purpose of the arrow.

Non-Verbally

Here’s another option that came to my mind.

Write this on the paper:

This image can be interpreted two ways.

1. We start on the left and move to the right.

   or

2. We start on the right.

In this case, I wouldn’t show them the arrow or mention its purpose. I’d draw it on the paper and have it placed face-down on the table. Have them roll the “die” and name the number. Then have them rotate the arrow (that they still don’t know is an arrow) face down on the table and turn over the piece of paper so it faces either direction. As they turn the paper, I’d tell them that “this is like a spinner on a gameboard,” then when they turn it over I’d cement in what it means.

“So it looks like we’re going to start on this side, and move this direction.”

or

“So we’re going to start on this end.”

I haven’t done it yet, but it feels pretty much unimpeachably fair to me.

Thanks to Ryan for writing in and letting me share the idea with you guys.