Friday, December 09, 2011
Sally Jessy, Rikki Lake, Jerry Springer, ... Penn and Teller??
So I went to see Penn and Teller last night at the O2. It wasn't quite what I expected. The magic tricks they did were amazing, and they truly are the best magic duo in terms of the way they work together. They even had Paul Daniels make a special guest appearance. BUT... 90% of the show was talking! It felt like something was rather off: rather akin to going to see Gordon Ramsay swim a couple of lengths or booking a night out to watch Sting darn a sock.
Penn is a great talker, sure, but there is a reason that he and Teller are magicians, not politicians. And anyway, people don't pay for an evening out at the O2 to go see politicians speak!
I wasn't the only one in the theatre who felt ripped off - you should have seen my 10 year old cousin! P&T pulled off about 5 tricks; all with the usual "we don't care" schtick. One trick involved the typical cups and balls, carried off brilliantly, but the twist was that they then *repeated* the trick with transparent cups, so you could see exactly what they were doing. Strangely, this didn't ruin it, as they explained exactly what they were doing, albeit very quickly, throughout. This kinda made it cooler. Another trick consisted of fooling only one volunteer who had her eyes closed while rings were interlinked with her arms and round her neck, etc. Again, the audience could see how it was done, and could see that it must have been truly amazing for the volunteer. This was also pulled off very well.
However, all of this was interspersed with Paul Daniels asking Penn and Teller relatively unexciting questions about their history and past TV appearances. You might say the show lost its magic halfway through, ho ho. Towards the end, they even opened up the floor to questions from the audience, which would have been cool, if not for the inane British knobs who got up and asked silly questions to appear clever.
Paul Daniels did no tricks. He just sat there looking OLD.
Penn is a great talker, sure, but there is a reason that he and Teller are magicians, not politicians. And anyway, people don't pay for an evening out at the O2 to go see politicians speak!
I wasn't the only one in the theatre who felt ripped off - you should have seen my 10 year old cousin! P&T pulled off about 5 tricks; all with the usual "we don't care" schtick. One trick involved the typical cups and balls, carried off brilliantly, but the twist was that they then *repeated* the trick with transparent cups, so you could see exactly what they were doing. Strangely, this didn't ruin it, as they explained exactly what they were doing, albeit very quickly, throughout. This kinda made it cooler. Another trick consisted of fooling only one volunteer who had her eyes closed while rings were interlinked with her arms and round her neck, etc. Again, the audience could see how it was done, and could see that it must have been truly amazing for the volunteer. This was also pulled off very well.
However, all of this was interspersed with Paul Daniels asking Penn and Teller relatively unexciting questions about their history and past TV appearances. You might say the show lost its magic halfway through, ho ho. Towards the end, they even opened up the floor to questions from the audience, which would have been cool, if not for the inane British knobs who got up and asked silly questions to appear clever.
Paul Daniels did no tricks. He just sat there looking OLD.
# posted by Jon @ 4:38 PM 
