Sleights of Hand

It’s Magic!, at age 62, is “America’s Longest-Running All Star Magic Revue” and it has brought top magicians to perform onstage at the Lobero many times. This April’s edition featured pyrotechincs, comatose doves, old fashioned bottle tricks, lovely women being cut in half, squeezing in to impossible spaces and having torches passed through them, as well as a levitating table, an annoyed 10 year-old audience member and a spaceship tended by a Darth Vader like character who changes identity. The most whimsical and head-scratch-inducing illusionist, clarinet playing Xavier Mortimer, brought to mind Jaques Tati, and not just because he’s French. Every time I see magic @ the Lobero I recall a show there when I was in high school: there was a little mishap and nearly everyone could see the subject rolling into the “hidden” compartment of a trunk, leading to a collective aha/groan from aspiring young magicians in the house.