Magicians labor in shadow of big names, but they’re tenacious

“Welcome to my new stage,” Jan Rouven says. Then, as he steps down from it to a folding chair that serves as the halfway point to the floor, “It’s not a step, it’s a leap.”

Nice one. But it’s not even the best metaphor of the conversation.

I’ve come to talk to Rouven about his step/leap to the Tropicana. The new show opens Friday at a relaunched property with promise so far unfulfilled. It also puts him on the same intersection with David Copperfield and Criss Angel, two more famous magicians with bigger marketing budgets.

To make things even more interesting, Rouven’s old room at the Rivera has been taken over by Dirk Arthur, who opens there Dec. 1. Arthur is calling his show “Wild Illusions,” while Rouven’s is still called “Illusions.”

Arthur is “a clever marketing guy, obviously,” Rouven says.

“Don’t be nice,” chastises his manager and show producer, Frank Alfter. Then he adds, “Everything is good, but they could have avoided this one. It’s confusing for the customer.”

But anyway, back to the metaphor. The German magician and his manager say their Las Vegas career to date has been an illusion in its own right, hiding in plain sight.

“We acted like we had a Vegas show,” Alfter says.

“Which is good,” Rouven adds. “We worked everything out while we stayed under the radar.”

In other words, they’ve won a game of low expectations. Rouven started his Las Vegas path in 2011 at the Clarion, the just-closed place where no performer was really expected to thrive.

But Rouven stayed long enough to make a modest step up to the Riviera. “We sold out that room many times,” Rouven says. “People who came asked, ‘How did you do that?’ ” he says of a property with too many shows and too little foot traffic.

“We could have stayed at the Riviera for the next 10 years. Under the radar and nobody would have noticed,” Alfter says. “We would have made tons of money, but imagewise and careerwise this is a dead-end street.”

When you step out of the front door of the Trop, “You really are in Vegas,” he says.

But you are also looking at a building wrap of Copperfield on the side of the MGM Grand. At the Riv, Arthur will be fine with looking out at Circus Circus, and happy to be back on the Strip after the closing of the original O’Sheas evicted him and his tigers in 2012.

Both proved their tenacity while laboring in the shadow of Las Vegas’ marquee magicians. And they’ve done it with the familiar big-box illusions which have been eclipsed, on TV at least, by close-up magic and stunt-driven escapes.

Rouven says there is still an audience for a colorful show with dancers — they’ve beefed up by almost $500,000 for the new stage — which Lance Burton used to provide.

“It’s 70 percent about him, his personality,” Alfter says. Germans who knew about Rouven back home would turn up at the show and at first be disappointed that it was in a small showroom that long hosted the “La Cage” drag revue.

“A Vegas magic show has a certain expectation. They think it’s Siegfried &Roy or something,” he explains. Rouven eventually “gets them, because they like him. But at the beginning he has to fight for it.”

Speaking of Siegfried &Roy, Arthur now has the tigers. “The only magic show in Las Vegas with rare exotic cats,” it says right there on the ad to drive the point home. They split what used to be one-stop shopping into a consumer decision: the quirky German or the ooh-ahh critters.

However it plays out, Rouven says he no longer feels as if his Las Vegas presence is an illusion. Whether it’s a step or a leap, “I walk and stand different on that stage. I walk like a true Las Vegas headliner now.

“You walk different on a big stage.”

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