Annual convention revitalizes magicians

So I'm sitting here blindfolded in a room full of strangers, in an extreme effort to be convinced there really is magic outside the box(es) of Las Vegas stage shows.

Stan Allen, publisher of Magic magazine, invited me to the "Magic Live!" convention at The Orleans to see what lies beyond the 15 Las Vegas shows all or in part dealing in trickery.

"From the Dark" proved I hadn't seen it all. But "see" is the wrong word for this show, which Juan Esteban Varela conducts with the lights out, having us use a little box strapped to our leg.

We feel inside for a coin, put it in a little bottle and shake it to hear the rattle. Then we imagine the coin disappearing, shake our bottles again and hear nothing.

Here's one thing I can tell you about a magic convention: They all want to know where Steve Wyrick gets the money. Here's another: Even if they all know how the trick is done, they still give up the applause.

The guy sitting next to me seems just as impressed as I am, and he is Tony Clark, producer-star of "Masters of Magic" at the MontBleu in Lake Tahoe. "It's rare, but I still love to be fooled," he says.

"Dark" wouldn't stand on its own in Las Vegas, but would be a great part of a show. Too bad we don't have any component showcases like Clark's. Tahoe is "a different market completely," he says, and he has no desire to play down here. "The advertising costs will cripple you."

A magic convention isn't any weirder than a "Star Trek" gathering. Sure, there are name tags that say Joe Mystic, and in the restroom, a guy at the urinal turns his head and announces, "If you hear shuffling, there's a problem."

But the crowd is only a few degrees older and more male than at the chic Bare Pool Lounge at The Mirage, where the same night Criss Angel celebrated the launch of his MagicPlace.com website. ("Four thousand hits per second!" Angel shouted into a mic upon news that the servers had crashed.)

But there was a guy spitting coins out of his head at the pool party, a much dorkier display than anything I saw at The Orleans.

The convention was a happy reversal of my suspicions about Las Vegas: There are more magic shows than general public interest to support them all.

Here, magicians packed The Orleans' theater to hear Mike Caveney's history of "Saw a Woman in Half." It was such a rage in the early 1920s that it sparked a race to patent variant methods.

Five magicians performed different versions of the classic. Sitting through that sounded like ironic torture for a guy who has reviewed five too many magic shows. But it was one of the best things I've watched all year.

Clark says the annual convention "revitalizes my energy for magic a bit." I see what he means.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.