Chamber Magic: no criss angel

Some time ago, a friend of mine received from his parents a birthday present of two tickets to a magic show.

I watched him struggle to compose his face as he realized that the two people in the world who had known him longest had misjudged his interest so thoroughly...

a magic show? really?

a box full of masking tape or manila envelopes would have been more in line with who he is or what he does with his time... and he already gets so much shit for looking like this cheeseball:



The last thing he would want to do would be to spend a night of his valuable time watching a guy in heavy hair and makeup do lame card tricks or the kinds of feats we've all seen at Coney Island a hundred times before.

Clearly, my friend was disappointed by the gift.

Worse, the magic show would require him to wear a jacket and look fancy for the night.
Worse, he couldn't imagine that anyone would want to take that second ticket and sit through a magic show with him.

A magic show? I know i asked this before, but: really??

Truth is, when he opened that gift I was nearby and got sort of excited. I would go with him, that was a no-brainer. I figured it would be a no-lose situation: we would go and we would either be amazed by the, um, magic-- or we would be amused by the incredible corniness of sequinned pants glinting through the hazy magical smoke or whatever. Maybe there would even be white tigers disappearing into tophats or something. Maybe the magician would have gorgeous hair and a cute assistant. Maybe the comedy of it all would make up for the lack of interesting so-called magic.

Really. And it turned out to be nothing short of amazing.

My friend had me to go with him, he found a jacket, and the magic show was fucking *excellent*.

1. No smoke or mirrors (or sequinned pants, or eyeliner).
2. No huge room with seats so far away you couldn't quite see enough to know there were no strings pulling the cards, etc. - it is parlour magic, with 20-50 audience members all sitting or invited to stand close enough to see ... well, everything, if we just knew where to look...
3. Magic!

Chamber Magic with Steve Cohen ("The Millionaires' Magician) is a weekly show that happens usually in the Waldorf-Astoria Towers (the private residence wing of the Waldorf-Astoria, apparently. The salon in which the show occurs is actually just steps away from the Presidential Suite, where each US President stays when visiting NYC). Because it's at the Waldorf, there is the old-wood, old-upholstery, old-crystal sort of air about the whole thing-- maybe a little conservative, maybe a little stuffy if you feel old things are conservative and stuffy. However, I think Mr. Cohen enjoys the vintage element of the thing-- his show itself (indeed his style of magic) is "vintage". Think more along the lines of The Prestige than Mindfreak (lucky for everyone), but without the smashed birds and drowned women.

This is salon magic, pure sleight-of-hand and graceful trickery so subtle you really can't tell that they're tricks. Honestly, the only way you know that they are tricks is because you find yourself clutching to your disbelief simply because you have to. There is no such thing as magic. There is no such thing as magic.

And yet --through amazing math skills perhaps?-- Cohen pulls cards from your mind and materializes them in his hands. Or, without his hands-- they rise from their packs from within glass cloches while he stands on the far side of the room talking to you. He serves you your favorite drink from the same teapot from which he served this other guy his favorite drink-- without anyone naming these drinks out loud (that's right-- a chianti, a margarita, an orange juice with calcium but without pulp, a cosmopolitan, a chocolate milk...). He will amaze you with a streetmap (really! Amaze!). He will tell you things you haven't told anyone but a card that you folded up and placed in a box and which he never had an apparent opportunity to read.

He might just even change your mind about magic shows. That's something.

...


You know what, though-- the most positive, good things/thumbs up element of the show was not even the crazy tricks and mindreading feats that had me turning bright pink and my friend nearly in tears of awe. The most thrilling and happy thing about the show was that Cohen seemed so genuinely happy to be there, doing what he was doing. Many time throughout the program, he referenced his childhood and his relationship with his uncle who had taught him his first magic trick and started him on this lifelong obsession with the perfect delivery of the perfect tricks. When he says that he thanks his audience for allowing him to live his dream, you feel this shot of joy and gratitude that is so warm and ...yes, just so happy. I suppose that's one sort of magic on a bitterly, miserably cold January night, too.