Showgirls of Magic – A Review
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| The Lovely Ophelia |
I was feeling pretty flush with cash. I had just hit the Trifecta at Santa Anita (my lucky track) and hit it pretty well. I have a couple of horses going off at 5:1 and 4:1 and the 5:1 took to the win.
Anyway, pretty flush with cash but more importantly, I had that exhilaration that comes when one?s intuition pays off.
People were giving me high-fives at the Harrah?s Race Book and the cocktail waitress brought by a giant Diet Coke with tons of ice ? For Free!
Here I was hitting her casino for some serious scratch and they were giving me a free 22 oz Diet Coke with that good kind of crushed ice.
It could not get better than this so I took my bankroll, my 21 oz of Diet Coke (I had a sip in celebration) and headed out of the book. As I sipped on the brown liquid love that is Diet Coke, I wondered how anything could top this feeling of excitement.
I found something.
By seeing the Showgirls of Magic, it got better. The high was higher than my…
I was feeling pretty flush with cash. I had just hit the Trifecta at Santa Anita (my lucky track) and hit it pretty well. I have a couple of horses going off at 5:1 and 4:1 and the 5:1 took to the win.
The Lovely Ophelia
Anyway, pretty flush with cash but more importantly, I had that exhilaration that comes when one?s intuition pays off.
People were giving me high-fives at the Harrah?s Race Book and the cocktail waitress brought by a giant Diet Coke with tons of ice ? For Free!
Here I was hitting her casino for some serious scratch and they were giving me a free 22 oz Diet Coke with that good kind of crushed ice.
It could not get better than this so I took my bankroll, my 21 oz of Diet Coke (I had a sip in celebration) and headed out of the book. As I sipped on the brown liquid love that is Diet Coke, I wondered how anything could top this feeling of excitement.
I found something.
By seeing the Showgirls of Magic, it got better. The high was higher than my previous all-time Vegas High recorded just hours ago at the Race Book.
It was better than hitting a Trifecta and filling out IRS forms and getting a free Diet Coke with great shaved ice.
(And by the way, this was not a Trifecta box ? I picked the correct order of the finishing horses)
Paul Daniels said ? and he would know ? that ?a magician should entertain.? The audience should leave the theater feeling they have been entertained. The Showgirls of Magic entertain so well that I didn?t want to leave.
Let me give a disclaimer here. I know that the really cool guys in magic don?t care for the Showgirls of Magic Show.
Some of the following are actual comments:
?It?s too pedestrian.?
?It?s really nothing more than a topless review fronting as a magic show.?
?Not all of the Showgirls are really showgirls.?
?The theater at the San Remo hotel is too small and they don?t have a good seating arrangement.?
?I lost money at the slot machines just outside the theater door ? that one with the Wheel of Fortune music ? and that?s the Showgirls of Magic?s fault.?
?The Showgirls of Magic doesn?t provide the type entertainment that I can secretly videotape from a mini-digital camera and sell on the Black Market as either ?Showgirls? or ?Magic.??
?Their Sub-Trunk Routine is a direct steal of the classic Sub-Trunk Routine as performed by Hardeen and Houdini at the Chicago World?s Fair except instead of changing vests ? they switch panties from pink to blue.?
(A historical note, on this one. The late Walter Gibson once told me that Hardeen had suggested he and Houdini would switch panties from pink to blue during the routine but Houdini rejected the idea. Houdini said, ?What?s wrong with you? You?re a complete freak. You?re really scaring me, man!? It was shortly thereafter that the greatest magician of our time, found and married the lovely Bess.)
None of these complaints are accurate.
The show opens with an excellent black-art based appearance of the Showgirls and the show begins its frenetic pace. There is no let-down at any point.
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Granted, the Showgirls are not magicians in the truest sense ? they do not smoke cigars, hang out at the Moose Lodge swapping stories about their best shows while they drown their sorrows on Nickel Beer Night and have closets filled with tricks they bought at a major magic convention but will never use.
But the effects they attempt and pull off are true magic tricks. They have very innovative routines ? such as the dual and simultaneous sawing of two women in half and the aforementioned Sub Trunk done to Kid Rock?s ?I Wanna Be a Cowboy.?
But the true star of the show is Steve Daly as the overweight drag queen, Tiny Bubbles. Mr. Daly is a true magician and truly entertaining.
He performs with the kind of professional style and quick wit that you expect from a Las Vegas show.
But he isn?t slick and stylish. His large size, self-deprecating humor and outrageous costumes could make him appear the clown but within seconds of his appearance on stage, you really connect with his character. By the end of the show, you genuinely care about his character.
Imagine how tough a role this is to pull off: audiences are coming to see four very attractive women wearing almost nothing perform magic and within minutes of the first two effects, Mr. Daly as Tiny Bubbles bounds onto the stage dressed as an enormous woman.
In some circles, we?d call that a ?buzz kill.?
The reason Mr. Daly makes this interruption of Buzz work is because he has the skills of a seasoned magician and the acting ability of a veteran of the legitimate stage.
He performs a couple of effects in the show and does it so well that I had to remember that they were just tricks ? he wasn?t really singing a duet with the freshly drawn caricature of his new boyfriend from the audience.
Hey, Tim. What up with this review? What about the girls? Talk about the girls. Tell us how they?re just up on stage as eye-candy and not really magicians and stuff. That?s the kind of review we expect. Don?t gush about how great an entertainer Mr. Daly is and how his rotund drag queen persona should be considered great art. Get harsh, man!
Sorry, folks, I can?t do it. This show is from top to bottom outstanding. It is well-written, it is apparently constantly adding new routines and really is a magic show in the truest sense. It is the type of professional show we?ve come to expect from David Saxe (brother of a long-time Inside Magic favorite, Melinda).
As Robert-Houdin once wrote, ?A magician is an actor playing the role of a magician.? Mr. Daly and the Showgirls effectively pull-off the task of entertaining as magicians.
Not since my last dental appointment when I slipped the hygienist an extra $20 to O.D. on nitrous oxide, have I laughed so hard and been in so much pain. In both cases, the laughter was genuine but involuntary.
When I get laughing uncontrollably, I sound like a cross between a teenage girl and a donkey. It?s an embarrassing laugh and so I fight against it. I don?t want to sound like a teenage girl or a donkey and certainly not both at the same time.
(Ironically, these two voices ? teenage girl and donkey ? have fed my family for years in my voice over work for the Japanese animated series Teengirl Donkey Friend Superhero).
It was not the 22 oz of dear Diet Coke, it was not the euphoric winning feeling of pulling down big money from a race, it was not even my lack of sleep over the previous 72 hours as I readied for the trip. I was being forced to laugh to the point of pain by the pure joy and entertainment I witnessed.
I had a chance to have breakfast with Mr. Daly and others from the show. At his size, I find it hard to believe that he has been this invisible to the major magic community for so long.
Out of costume and character, he comes across as someone who loves Magic with the same kind of irrational depth as most of us. He spoke about his ideas for new effects, his history in Magic and theater and related true stories that caused me to break into the Donkey Teeny-Bopper laugh for the next few hours.
Mr. Daly is now one of my favorite entertainers ever. His passion for performing and his love of Magic is overwhelming. He is every bit as important to the Vegas strip as Lance Burton or the now-closed Siegfried and Roy show. What a wonderful gift his work is to our Art.
Bottom line: If you are even close to Nevada, you must see Showgirls of Magic. If you love Magic and you love to be entertained, I suggest you make a special effort to get to Vegas if only to see this one show. On a scale of one-to-five, this is a Great show!
Okay, I?m done. Time to go back downstairs and take this casino for another ride before heading back to the Seminar. I can already hear the free Diet Coke with shaved ice calling. I have no idea how this place makes any money if they keep giving away drinks to me but I?m not complaining.
