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| Avoid His Gaze! |
Jason Norman writes in the Suffolk (VA) News Herald of his first experience at a David Copperfield show. Like most of us, he found a decided difference in the Mr. Copperfield from television and the one appearing at Norfolk’s Chrysler Hall.
Over the past decade, I’ve watched David Copperfield walk through the Great Wall of China, make the Statue of Liberty vanish, and fly onstage. But on Sunday evening at Norfolk’s Chrysler Hall, I finally got to see him from a few feet away – and it was an experience that amazing, incredible, astonishing and shocking put together wouldn’t describe.
Despite Mr. Norman’s choice seats — a benefit of being a reporter — he found himself unable to discern the great magician’s methods.
Mr. Norman, we fear, has succumbed to Mr. Copperfield’s charismatic in-person powers. We never really cared for Mr. Copperfield when we’d see him on television. In the early days, back before flat-screens and HDTV or even cable, we viewed Mr. Copperfield as a precocious kid magician. To paraphrase Lloyd Benson, we knew television magicians, Doug Henning was a television magician, and Mr. Copperfield was no Doug Henning.
Sure, we liked the innovation and expense of the shows. But man-oh-man did we hate the smarmy close-up shots. It was too much. Just too much. Where Mr. Henning could charm through the lens of the camera, Mr. Copperfield tried too hard to charm. We really cared when Mr. Henning performed the Chinese Water Torture Cell. We knew how it worked and we even knew he likely practiced the effect once or twice before the live television show. Still, anything could happen and we didn’t want it to be bad. We liked Mr. Henning. When we saw him in person at The Magic Show in New York, we liked him even more. There was no incongruity between his on-stage and on-air persona.
So the tally: Mr. Henning – Good. Mr. Copperfield – Bad.
Then we saw Mr. Copperfield in person. We were in the top balcony of the Chicago Civic Opera House conveniently located in Chicago, Illinois. It had been raining all day, we don’t believe in umbrellas, we were soaked and miserable. Our seat was terrible. Someone in our immediate area smelled as if he or she smoked a very bad cigar through a wet tube sock. The culprit was likely not a “she” given the cigar and tube sock essences.
Mr. Copperfield’s show opened and we forgot all of the negative feelings towards him, the rain, lousy seats, and even the horrible smell. By this time, others had noticed the smell as well and were moving to seats on the other side of the balcony. Eventually I was alone with…
Continue reading Copperfield’s Cult Captures Another
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