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      ‘He Must Have Superpowers’: Asi Wind and His Sublime Card Tricks

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      With a new one-man show, deploying a single deck of cards, the performer’s 20-year run as magic’s best-kept secret may be nearing its end.“Every now and then, this fails,” said Asi Wind, pausing for a suspense-maximizing moment during his new one-man magic show, “Asi Wind’s Inner Circle.” “This could fail. If it does, remember all the fun we had before.”There is little chance anyone took this whimsical disclaimer seriously. By the time it was offered, Wind, a 43-year-old Israeli-born New Yorker with the effervescent wit of a good dinner party host and the cunning of a master jewel thief, had already pulled off so many seemingly impossible feats that only a sucker would have bet against him. If he’d told us that we were all about to start floating around the room, half of the audience would have reached for a Dramamine and braced for lift off.Detailing what happens during this giddily mystifying 70-minute production — which opened last month and runs at the Gym at Judson, next to Washington Square Park in Manhattan, until Jan. 1 — would spoil more than a few surprises and much of the fun. Suffice to say, the entire show revolves around a single deck of playing cards, and the cards behave in ways that defy reason and, occasionally, the laws of physics.But Wind’s niftiest trick, honed over more than 20 years and thousands of private events, is his ability to eliminate any sense that he and his audience are locked in a contest. He does it with a combination of charm and humility that peers say is just one reason he ranks among the great magicians of our time.“When he was in his late 20s, I was describing him as one of the finest close-up performers in the country, and I think he’s been at the top of the magic world ever since,” said Jamy Ian Swiss, author of six magic books and co-producer of the long-running show Monday Night Magic at the Players Theater in Greenwich Village. “Very often a performer has a big personality onstage or he’s got great technical chops or he’s just inventive. And you can get by on any one of these qualities. Asi has all three. He’s the complete package.”For “Asi Wind’s Inner Circle,” audience members are asked to write their first and last names on blank playing cards, which are then spread on a round table where Wind conjures his mischief.Joan MarcusMany magicians imply that they are performing miracles and dare onlookers to divine their methods. Wind turns that approach on its head. He tells spectators that he can’t do magic and then makes any other explanation seem inconceivable.And he does it with ease and self-deprecating humor — “C’mon,” he said at one point, faux-pleading for a big reaction, “in Israel that’s a miracle!” — that will disarm even the most ardent Card Trick Columbos, those spectators too busy trying to bust the performer to enjoy the performance.Though a star among insiders, Wind has remained a relative unknown to the public. He had an Off Broadway show in 2013 called “Concert of the Mind,” and there was his wickedly bamboozling appearance on the competition television show “Penn & Teller: Fool Us,” in 2019, which has been viewed on YouTube nearly 14 million times. That video and a few other clips are about the only glimpses available of the man at work. He’s maintained a surprisingly low profile, earning his living at corporate shows and consulting with David Blaine, a producer of “Inner Circle” who calls Wind “my favorite magician.”“Fame is not his goal,” Blaine said in a phone interview. “What interests him most is answering the question, ‘How can I make magic a great experience for my audience?’ That’s what he’s chasing.”Wind’s status as magic’s best-kept secret may end with “Inner Circle,” which is built around a simple, ingenious premise. Before the action begins, ushers ask audience members to write their first and last names on blank-face playing cards that all have identical backs. The cards are then spread on a round table where Wind will sit and conjure his mischief.So every trick is performed with a deck missing any of the standard suits, faces or numbers, and that changes every night. A card might start off as “Zach Alexander” then transform, in Zach’s hands, into “Rachel Silver.” Rachel may then open a sealed envelope she’s been guarding, only to find “Zach Alexander” inside.“A playing card has information on it, but to most people, the six of hearts, for example, means nothing,” Wind said one recent afternoon. “But if a spectator puts his name on that card, suddenly it is significant. It’s not a card. It’s a person.”Wind was sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, a place that has a cameo in the show — a spectator is dispatched here to ask a stranger for a random number — and a key role in his origin story. In 2001, he flew to the United States, intending a quick visit with his brother, but fell hard for New York City and tore up his return ticket. With no job prospects, let alone a work visa, he took a regular deck of cards to this park and performed for tips for anyone who could be convinced to stand still for a few minutes.“It was hard, and I failed,” he recalled, with a smile. “But it taught me a valuable lesson — that magic is about connecting to people. It’s about them.”Wind was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, a go-to outfit that he augments for performances with a dark sports jacket, a look that says TED Talk more than “I do magic.” During a two-hour interview, he was animated, funny and candid about his struggles, which include a somewhat debilitating streak of perfectionism that he described as a curse.“It’s never being satisfied, never being super happy with something,” he said. “It really takes a toll on me, emotionally.”Wind in Washington Square Park, where he used to perform for tips.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesHe pronounced himself “60 to 70 percent” pleased with the show during this talk in late September, and said he’d never stop refining it. For years, he’s kept vampiric hours in his Upper East Side apartment, spending all night practicing sleights and polishing routines. “Inner Circle” includes effects that Wind has been fine-tuning for decades. There’s no hint of methods in the show, let alone the daredevilish risks he takes through the evening, because he’s spent thousands of hours rendering his techniques invisible.When he’s in the mood for more visible handiwork, he paints watercolors. Many are portraits of his magic heroes, several of which are projected onto the round table at the end of “Inner Circle” during a monologue about those who have influenced him.“Harry Houdini,” he said, introducing the first image. “He understood that it’s not enough to fool people with magic. You have to make them care.”Wind began his life as Asi Betesh in Holon, a city near Tel Aviv. An uncle showed him the first tricks he ever saw, and the owner of a magic shop later scrambled his brains with a card trick that he can still describe in detail.He left Israel after developing a comedy-magic act inspired by Steve Martin and lived with his brother in Brooklyn while working the lowest rungs on the entertainment ladder — twisting balloon animals for tips at a Toys “R” Us in the Bronx or performing at kids’ parties dressed as SpongeBob SquarePants, in a costume that once gave him scabies.“Oh my God, was that hard to get rid of,” he said. “I had to take so many showers and take every sheet, every fabric in my apartment to the laundromat.”He started landing gigs at parties and, eventually, a spot at Monday Night Magic, which first let him perform during intermissions and seven years later, in 2008, as a headliner. As his reputation grew, Penn and Teller tried to coax him on to “Fool Us” and succeeded only after agreeing to let Wind perform without having to dupe the hosts.“For all his talk about not wanting to compete,” said Penn, a bit grumpily, “he did a trick backstage that had one purpose — to fool me. So shut up, Asi.”Today, and for the run of “Inner Circle,” Wind has a theater of his own, a bespoke and painstakingly fabricated 106-seater that is based on a venue for magicians in Munich. Judging from audience reactions, the design yields an intimacy that makes the effects astonishing from every vantage point.“I was sitting there thinking that all the people he was calling on were shills — and then he called my name,” Wendy Rogers, a public-school teacher from Brooklyn, said after the show. “He must have superpowers or something because what he does isn’t possible on earth. And yet he does it.” More

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      Penn Jillette Lives on Hot Baths and Cold Watermelon

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      The magician and author of the new novel, “Random,” says whether he’s writing fiction or doing tricks, he’s always telling a story.Penn Jillette keeps files on his computer for magic tricks and others for fiction, but he keeps them together and the distinction between them is not always clear. He once wrote a short story, for example, that his longtime partner, Teller, thought would make a good magic trick, so they turned it into a bit called King of Animal Traps.“The first thing I wanted to be was a writer,” he said in a recent phone interview. “I think if you got either Teller or I to be completely honest, we would probably tell you that what we’re doing in the Penn & Teller show is writing.”Jillette’s latest novel, “Random,” is about a young man who inherits his father’s crushing debt to a loan shark and turns to dice — and other dangerous measures — to dig himself out. That the dice bring him luck sends him a new philosophy of leaning decisions both big and small up to chance.Whether he’s writing a novel or writing a bit, Jillette said, he’s always trying to tell a story.“My happiest moments are Teller and I getting together and figuring out what we want to say, what we’re feeling with a trick, with a bit, and to figure out how to do that,” he said. “Now, I don’t want to lie and say I don’t love being onstage — I love it, and I love the applause, and I love the laughs — that is the thing I like most in the world, other than putting the stuff together that I’m going to put onstage. Writing fiction feels like very much the same thing.”Here, the author, magician and co-star of the CW’s “Penn & Teller: Fool Us,” talks about how he takes his watermelon, why he prefers skepticism to cynicism and how he convinced Teller to pay for half his new bass. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Too Hot Baths Every night I take a bath that’s so hot that I come very close to passing out — and I use scented oil, the whole thing is done as girly as possible. And I read on my Kindle. I’m trying to learn Spanish, so I read Spanish for at least a half an hour, and then I read in English for another half an hour.2. Too Cold Watermelon I lost a lot of weight a few years ago. One of the ways I keep the weight off is by eating watermelon. It seems you can eat more watermelon than any other food and it still feels good and it still tastes good. The secret is cutting it up and getting it super cold so that it almost hurts your teeth.3. Lava Lamps I always go back and forth: Am I a beatnik? Am I a hippie? I know I’m one of the two, and I know that no alcohol gets in the way of me being a beatnik, and no drugs get in the way of me being a hippie. I think I own 20 lava lamps. They’re in every room of my house. And I like to look at them and pretend, even though I’ve never been high, that I am high.4. Tony Fitzpatrick I study music rather extensively because it’s unnatural to me. And that is what fascinates me about it. I’m very bad with visual stuff, too, so I have artwork all over my house to try to drill it into my head why it’s beautiful. One of my favorite artists is Tony Fitzpatrick out of Chicago. I have his etching up all over the house.5. Ray Brown There are so many great bass players, but Ray Brown had that sound and that solidity and that power. He’s an inspiration and he’s one of my ways into jazz. I love his recording of “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” with fellow bassists John Clayton and Christian McBride.6. Skepticism, Not Cynicism I have fought my whole life to not be cynical, but to be skeptical. You could have many minutes of arguments between me and Bill Maher over why cynicism is bad and skepticism is good. Cynicism is attributing the worst motives to people. Skepticism is looking for the truth.7. Tiny Tim On a wall in my home, I have Tiny Tim’s costume that he wore for most of his career, the ukulele that he played for most of his career and his shoes. I love the fact that a person came along who was so honest that cynicism could not live within him. Some of the most cynical people who have ever lived — Bing Crosby, Johnny Carson, John Lennon, Howard Stern, Frank Sinatra — in the presence of Tiny Tim, they completely broke down.8. Word Processors I wanted to be a writer so badly. My mom taught me to type and I was a very good typist, but I still made mistakes and I’m a really bad speller. I finally bought a computer after Teller and I had our show Off Broadway, and within 24 hours of getting a computer, I wrote two stories that were published. I am sitting in front of the most powerful computer Mac has to offer — I could edit “Avatar” on it — but 95 percent of what I do is word processing.9. Paul Toenniges Double Bass I play the bass for an hour before Penn & Teller shows. A very good bass player named Alex Frank told me I was better than the bass I was playing. He found a bass for me that was made by a man named Paul Toenniges. He said it was very expensive but also the best bass he’d ever played — it had been owned by the late bassist Dave Stone. I emailed Teller to see if he thought I should buy it. Because the way our taxes are structured, he’d pay for half of it. The email came back within a minute and said: “We never economize on our tools. Buy it.” I hadn’t even told him the price.10. Bob Dylan I think it is possible that I’ve listened to Bob Dylan every day for the past 52 years. Bob Dylan is something we encounter very rarely, which is incredible skill, coupled with a wildness of spirit. All you’ve got to do is see a Paul McCartney concert and a Bob Dylan concert. Paul McCartney, you know exactly what you’re going to get. Bob Dylan? You have no idea. More

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      Derek DelGaudio and the Great Unburdening of Secrets

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDerek DelGaudio and the Great Unburdening of SecretsThe magician explains how he worked up to “In & Of Itself” in a new memoir, “Amoralman,” a prequel of sorts to the show.“I felt I was born with an absence of some sort, and I think that I’ve spent much of my life trying to fill that void,” said Derek DelGaudio, addressing a major theme in his new book.Credit…Calla Kessler for The New York TimesMarch 3, 2021If anything in Derek DelGaudio’s appearance and demeanor sets him apart, it’s that little sets him apart. Soft-spoken and presenting a beguiling, open face — one might call it “innocent” — the modern conjurer was unfailingly polite and forthcoming in a recent video interview.Yet DelGaudio, 36, spent two years scrambling audiences’ expectations, often bringing people to tears, in his Off Broadway show “In & Of Itself,” a feat anybody with a Hulu subscription can now experience via the documentary film of the same name.The most obviously attention-grabbing part of DelGaudio’s new memoir, “Amoralman” (Knopf), explores his six-month stint as a bust-out dealer (a sleight-of-hand expert hired to secretly favor specific players, i.e. a professional cheat) at an exclusive weekly poker game, when he was in his mid-20s.It’s a wildly entertaining, thriller-like set piece — yes, there is a gun — though, as with the show, it is shot through with heady existential queries. Plato’s cave, which involves illusion and manipulation, is a driving allegory in the book, which is also undergirded by the cultural thinker Jean Baudrillard’s theories of the relationship between reality and simulation.“Amoralman” now joins “The Matrix” in proving you can turn French philosophy into compelling entertainment. This places DelGaudio, who also makes up the conceptual duo A. Bandit with the artist Glenn Kaino, at a crossroads between favorites of the museum world like Marina Abramovic and hustlers with such names as Titanic Thompson.Performances of DelGaudio’s one-man show, “In & Of Itself,” were captured for a documentary that is available on Hulu.Credit…Hulu“After seeing the show, I concluded that Derek is not a magician, but not a performance artist either,” Abramovic, who is glimpsed in the Hulu film, wrote in an email. “He is on his own in a category he created himself. In some abstract way he reminds me of Marlon Brando. He establishes trust between the audience and himself, which allows emotions to get in. We are not looking at him; we are together with him.”Speaking via Zoom from his Manhattan home, DelGaudio explained that the new book is a sort of prequel to “In & Of Itself,” going back to his childhood with a lesbian mother, his discovery of magicians, swindlers and con men, and those nerve-racking poker nights. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“Amoralman” is subtitled “A True Story and Other Lies,” and it features something we could call a plot twist that upends the reader’s perspective. Did those set off alarm bells with your publisher, considering the fraught history of memoirs taking liberties with facts?They were very, very uncomfortable. They said, “Have you heard of a book called ‘A Million Little Pieces’?” I hadn’t heard of that story. It’s complicated because I have a background as a magician: You think I’m going to fool you. So I use that to reveal something true that you can’t believe is true because you think that I’m here to deceive you. There’s things in the book that are so fantastical, they either couldn’t possibly be true or they could be. The answer is, they are true. But it’s the artist’s job to present them in a way that’s so fantastical, you can’t possibly believe them.Most of the time, audience members are just props in magic shows, someone to pick a card, but you go much further. How do you think of your relationship with viewers and readers?The audience are genuinely part of the equation. Despite what the movie shows, which is a very emotional arc, that was not part of it for me. I never tried to make anyone cry. I never tried to have a reaction. I just wanted to create the gestures, say the things I came to say, and let them interpret it however they want. I think that empathy is weaponized, often, especially by magicians, in a way that is not necessarily healthy or generous.A major thread in the book is your friendships with male mentors: Walter from the Colorado Springs magic shop; the virtuoso card cheat Ronnie; even Leo from the Hollywood poker games, who treats you like a son. How did they connect with your interest in magic?I felt I was born with an absence of some sort, and I think that I’ve spent much of my life trying to fill that void. That void was created by external sources: I lived in a world that told me explicitly that I’m supposed to have a father — a mother and a father. I was aware of that need to have a male influence in my life, but then there was also this feeling, a real need, to keep secrets to protect my family. So I found this very interesting world that not only was male-dominated, but it trafficked exclusively in secrets.Part of the book is about how you had to prove yourself to these guys. How tough was it?To earn my seat at their table, I had to become better than anything they had ever seen before. I felt like the kid in those samurai movies that sits on the porch for a week before he even gets led into the dojo.Do you feel the show and “Amoralman” are part of an effort to define yourself?I’ve been trying to free myself from the burden of secrets and from the burden of feeling so attached to an identity that I adopted early on in life — without even realizing that’s what I was doing — which was of a deceiver, a magician, a trickster. And trying to create work that lives up to Pierre Huyghe, Francis Alÿs, Marina with the tools that I’ve had is very, very difficult. But it’s only difficult because of perception, because of frameworks and contexts — it’s not actually the work, it’s everything around it.With the show, the film and now the book behind you, it feels as if you’re closing a chapter of your life. What are your plans?I don’t feel the need to do anything anyone’s seen me do before, and I’m excited to have that discomfort of staring into the abyss of what’s next. Maybe in 20 years I’ll reveal that I’ve been working on a show and didn’t tell you.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Now You See It: A Magician’s Memoir Promises Truth and Other Lies

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to ReadNew Books to Watch For This Month25 Book Review GreatsNew in PaperbackListen: The Book Review PodcastAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNonfictionNow You See It: A Magician’s Memoir Promises Truth and Other Lies“My mother had taught me the value of truth,” the magician Derek DelGaudio writes in “Amoralman,” his memoir, “but she neglected to teach me the cost.”Credit…Calla Kessler for The New York TimesAmazonApple BooksBarnes and NobleBooks-A-MillionBookshopIndieboundWhen you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.March 2, 2021AMORALMANA True Story and Other LiesBy Derek DelGaudioLying is ubiquitous. Why should it be otherwise? There are far more reasons to lie than to tell the truth. Isn’t lying beneficial? Often, it is. And the importance of truth-telling — is it a fiction we tell ourselves? A fairy tale? A form of self-deception? Our original lie?And yet we have this absurd belief that we are truth-tellers, or at least that we’re capable of occasionally telling the truth.In “Amoralman,” Derek DelGaudio’s masterly memoiristic account of lying and self-deception, we start life fully capable of truth-telling. Man in the state of nature or in infancy (take your pick) revels in telling the truth to others. In his epigraph DelGaudio — a sleight-of-hand artist and stage performer — quotes Ecclesiastes: “We are born knowing only truth. Then we see.” Maybe we retain this ability later in life. But it seems unlikely. We may know the truth, but quickly realize no good can come of it. So we give up on it.“Amoralman” offers up successive parables. Central among them is the parable of the cave from Plato’s “Republic.” In the parable, men are in shackles. They can turn neither to the left nor to the right, nor can they look behind them. They spend their lives looking at the shadows of things — not the things in and of themselves. (Not so coincidentally, the title of DelGaudio’s Off Broadway play and its subsequent screen adaptation is “In & Of Itself.”) They are prevented from seeing the truth and when shown the things in their real and substantial form, prefer to return to shadows and shackles. It is summed up in DelGaudio’s maxim: “I lost sight of reality just enough to glimpse the truth.”The book is in two parts. The first part, a bildungsroman, introduces DelGaudio’s family, his mother’s lesbian lover, Jill, and then Ryan, the boy next door. Their Colorado neighborhood comprises two different religious groups: conservative Christians and ultraconservative Christians. Ryan and his family are members of the latter. DelGaudio’s happy childhood is permanently interrupted when he tells Ryan about having two mothers. “My mother had taught me the value of truth, but she neglected to teach me the cost,” he writes. “She told me that honesty was always the best policy, but now I had evidence to the contrary.”The second part of the book is an extended poker game. Hired to cheat others, DelGaudio imagines he’s in control. After all, he’s the one involved in false dealing. It turns out differently than he might have expected.This is a story of unending ironies and misconceptions. That which we expected to be the truth is a lie, or at least a partial fiction. Anecdotes could be true, but falsely attributed. Intentions could be and are misrepresented or misunderstood. Good guys turn out to be bad guys and vice versa. And the purpose of magic and sleight-of-hand in such a universe? It goes back to Plato’s cave, which reminds us that things are always different than they seem. We misunderstand context. We confuse shadowy representations for the things in and of themselves. We live in a shadowy, fictional world.DelGaudio believed when he was a boy that the puppeteers in Plato’s cave were trying to dupe the prisoners. But he couldn’t answer why. By the end of his story, he realizes that the puppeteers may have been themselves deceived. And yet, grafted onto what might at first seem like a despairing vision — a vision I would not be at all unsympathetic toward — is a belief that life is not less than what it seems, but more. We are limited by how we see ourselves, and once we shed those blinders the possibilities are endless. Once we realize we are all slaves dealing in a world of shadows, we can imagine (or even confront) almost infinite possibility. So, is this ultimately about deception? Or is it about truth?Why not both? “I am not interested in fooling people,” DelGaudio tells us. “It’s about truth. To know illusions is to know reality. … I want to be the prisoner that returns to the cave.” He imagines an escapee who “picks up the tools of the puppeteer and teaches himself to cast shadows, with the hope of using those illusions to set the others free.”His deepest epiphany comes when he realizes that the game of duplicity that he’s running is being run on him. He is duping others, but he is also duping himself. Like Plato’s cave, nothing is as it seems.“Amoralman” can be seen as a series of illustrations about how we deceive ourselves into believing that whatever we’re doing is right and good. There’s the sense that the only thing we can be certain of is that we’re being deceived. But also, that the real Amoralman, the most amoral man of all, is ourselves.There is a much-told anecdote sometimes attributed to William James. It concerns the little old lady who on being told that the Earth revolves around the sun, said, “I’ve got a better theory.”“And what is that, madam?” inquired James politely.“That we live on a crust of earth which is on the back of a giant turtle.”“If your theory is correct, madam,” he asked, “what does this turtle stand on?”“You’re a very clever man, Mr. James, and that’s a very good question,” the little old lady replied, “but I have an answer to it. The first turtle stands on the back of a second, far larger, turtle, who stands directly under him.”“But what does this second turtle stand on?” asked James.To this, the little old lady replied, “Oh, Mr. James — it’s turtles all the way down.”In DelGaudio it is turtles all the way down. Turtles on top of turtles on top of more turtles without surcease. Certainty leads to uncertainty and then more uncertainty.For me, the shadow of Ricky Jay runs through much of this. Ricky was a friend of mine, a master magician, an incredible archivist and raconteur. DelGaudio is a less misanthropic version of Ricky. Not necessarily nicer, but less misanthropic. What we don’t know about man doesn’t lead us into a pit of despair, but perhaps to a future of enlightenment and to greater possibility. We are opening our eyes not to slavery but to infinite possibility. Such an optimistic vision almost gives me the heebie-jeebies. But it’s the end of the Trump era, and we deserve to turn over a new leaf, no?In the first part of the book, there’s an exchange between DelGaudio and his mother where he tells her he wants to be a Christian. Then he learns that Christianity can be as much about intolerance as about forgiveness. But there’s this additional irony in DelGaudio’s presentation of himself. At times he seems like a Pentecostal revivalist. He often has the air of a disappointed true-believer. This is the stuff not of nihilism, but of someone searching for true belief. Perhaps searching for something beyond belief.It reminds me of one of my favorite lines in literature — the last line of Huysmans’s “À Rebours”: “O Lord, pity the Christian who doubts, the skeptic who would believe, the convict of life embarking alone in the night, under a sky no longer illumined by the consoling beacons of ancient faith.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Siegfried Fischbacher, Magician of Siegfried & Roy, Dies at 81

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySiegfried Fischbacher, Magician of Siegfried & Roy, Dies at 81Mr. Fischbacher’s death came months after that of Roy Horn, his partner in one of the most spectacular shows in Las Vegas history.The illusionist Siegfried Fischbacher in 2008. Together, he and Roy Horn captivated Las Vegas audiences for decades.Credit…Mark Sullivan/Getty Images for CineVegasRichard Sandomir and Jan. 14, 2021Updated 6:30 p.m. ETSiegfried Fischbacher, the German-born magician who was half of Siegfried & Roy, the team that captivated Las Vegas audiences with performances alongside big cats, elephants and other exotic animals, died on Wednesday night at his home in Las Vegas. He was 81.The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his publicist, Dave Kirvin. Mr. Fischbacher’s longtime partner in the production, Roy Horn, died of complications of Covid-19 in May at 75.For a time, the team’s name was all but synonymous with Las Vegas show business, with spectacular performances that combined smoke machines and white tigers, lasers and elephants, sequined costumes, snakes and illusions of metamorphosis.Their long-running production at MGM’s Mirage hotel and casino was one of the most lavish and successful in Las Vegas history.Mr. Fischbacher, left, and Roy Horn with Mantecore, the tiger that mauled Mr. Horn in 2003.Credit…Peter Bischoff, via Getty ImagesThe pair’s show ended in October 2003, after Mr. Horn was mauled by a 400-pound white tiger named Mantecore, which dragged him offstage before a stunned capacity crowd of 1,500 at the Mirage.The attack left Mr. Horn with lasting damage to his body. After he spent years recovering, the team made one final appearance, with Mantecore, at a benefit performance for the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas in February 2009. They retired from show business in 2010.Mr. Horn, left, and Mr. Fischbacher in New York in 1987 with the rare white tigers Neva, left, a female, and Vegas, a male.Credit…Scott Mckiernan/Associated PressMr. Fischbacher and Mr. Horn, who were domestic as well as professional partners, kept dozens of exotic cats and other animals in the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat, a glass-enclosed, tropically forested habitat at the Mirage; at Jungle Paradise, an 88-acre estate outside town; and at Jungle Palace, their $10 million Spanish-style home in Las Vegas.“From the moment we met, I knew Roy and I, together, would change the world,” Mr. Fischbacher said in a statement after Mr. Horn’s death. “There could be no Siegfried without Roy and no Roy without Siegfried.”The two performers amazed Las Vegas audiences over four decades with stage extravaganzas that blended Mr. Fischbacher’s mastery of illusion and Mr. Horn’s preternatural ability to train and communicate with white tigers, lions and other animals.In their lavish shows, an elephant would vanish, a white tiger would turn into a beautiful woman, a tiger would appear to levitate over the audience and Mr. Horn would become a snake.The success of Siegfried & Roy’s show paved the way for more spectacular ones in Las Vegas.“Cirque du Soleil came in, you know, and Steve Wynn started that concept of Cirque in Las Vegas,” Mr. Fischbacher told Las Vegas Weekly in 2013. “The same thing that we inspired, Cirque du Soleil, inspired him.”Mr. Fischbacher was born on June 13, 1939, in Rosenheim, Germany, to Martin and Maria Fischbacher. At age 8, he became fascinated with magic when he saw a book on the subject in the window of a local store. It cost only five marks, but his mother would not give him the money; he claimed to have a found a five-mark note on a street and bought the book.When he performed a trick in which a coin vanished in a glass of water, his father praised him. “For me, having been brought up in a strict Bavarian way, it was the first time my father ever acknowledged me,” he is quoted as saying in his online biography.He was inspired by a German magician named Kalanag, whose show, Mr. Fischbacher said, was “one of the most exciting events in my life.”He left home at 17, working first as a dishwasher and bartender at a small hotel in Lago di Garda, Italy, then as a steward on the Bremen, a German cruise liner. The captain of the Bremen saw him perform magic for the crew and suggested that he perform for the passengers.He met Mr. Horn on the Bremen in 1957. Mr. Horn was a cabin boy with a love of animals who had smuggled his pet cheetah, Chico, onto the ship. They struck up a friendship, and Mr. Fischbacher asked Mr. Horn to help out with his magic act.“I did the usual thing: rabbit out of the hat and birds and so on,” Mr. Fischbacher said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” in 2003, five days after Mr. Roy’s accident. “Afterwards, I said, ‘What do you think?’ And he said, ‘Can you do what you did with a rabbit with a cheetah?’”“I didn’t know he had a pet cheetah at the time,” he added, “and I said, ‘Anything is possible.’”In 1964, five years after they started working together, they were playing nightclubs in Germany and Switzerland. When they performed at a charity benefit in Monte Carlo in 1966, Princess Grace of Monaco raved about them, giving their career a boost.As their act became more extravagant with the addition of more illusions and animals, Siegfried & Roy were booked into nightclubs throughout Europe. They made their debut in Las Vegas at the Tropicana in 1967, then moved on to headliner status at the Stardust in 1978 and the Frontier, where the marquee billed them as “Superstars of Magic.”Steve Wynn, who built the Mirage, signed them to a five-year, $57.5 million contract in 1987, three years before the hotel and casino opened. The deal included building a theater to Siegfried & Roy’s specifications. Mr. Wynn quickly cashed in on his expensive bet when they began to sell out immediately. They grossed an estimated $30 million in 1990 (about $60 million in today’s dollars).They were “the single most successful entertainment attraction in Las Vegas history,” Mr. Wynn was quoted as saying on the ABC News program “Nightline” in 2019.“Thirty years, 48 weeks a year, capacity business,” he added.Their act ended abruptly on Oct. 3, 2003 with the mauling of Mr. Horn after 5,750 performances at the Mirage. During their performance, he stumbled onstage — both he and Mr. Fischbacher said he had probably had a stroke — leading Mantecore to grab him by the neck and drag him offstage, causing an extreme loss of blood.Mr. Horn believed the tiger, sensing he was ill, was trying to protect him. Immediately after, Mr. Horn is said to have asked that no harm come to Mantecore. (The tiger was unharmed, and died 11 years later.)Mr. Fischbacher is survived by his brother, Marinus, and his sister, Margot, a Franciscan nun who goes by Sister Dolore.Speaking to Larry King in 2003, Mr. Fischbacher talked about the connection that he and Mr. Horn had with their audience, some of whom came hundreds of times.“I’m OK,” he said. “I’m good. I love my audience. I love the audience like Roy loves the animals, and this combination together, it worked, you know.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Review: A World of Cardsharps and Zoom Dupes in ‘The Future’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyReview: A World of Cardsharps and Zoom Dupes in ‘The Future’In his latest magic show, Helder Guimarães shuffles an old genre into a new technology with mixed results.Helder Guimarães in “The Future,” his Zoom magic show for the Geffen Playhouse.Credit…Julie RenfroDec. 14, 2020When a used-car salesman says, “I will be honest,” it’s a sure sign he won’t be.Same with a card huckster. For him, “I will be honest” means “Don’t look at my hands.” Other tells may include “You saw for yourself that this deck was legitimately shuffled.” (It wasn’t.) Or “I want this to be as fair as possible.” (Watch your wallet.)All of these are part of Helder Guimarães’s patter in “The Future,” a Zoom magic show from the Geffen Playhouse trying very hard to be more — but only partly succeeding. Oddly, it’s the magic part that most disappoints, at least as theater. The “more” part, a stretch toward greater meaning, is engaging even as you wonder if it too is a deception.That stretch comes between card tricks, as Guimarães offers glimpses of his life’s journey from fanboy to sorcerer’s apprentice to fast hand for hire. The tension between entertainment and crookery that’s built into the business eventually grows into a full-blown dilemma when he meets his childhood idol in Marseille.The idol, a British cardsharp named Kevin who presents himself as a reformed gambler, at first fulfills Guimarães’s teenage fantasies. Kevin seems to be the kind of man who would ply his trade in purple rooms with velour curtains and Venetian landscapes on the wall.The reality, in the form of a rigged high-stakes poker game Kevin invites Guimarães to join, is somewhat seedier. Eventually the younger man has to make a choice between betraying his idol and maintaining what he thought were his values.“I wanted to put some wonder in the world,” he says. Kevin, on the other hand, “wanted to outsmart people for money.”By the time Guimarães finds himself rigging raffles at corporate parties, the bright-line difference between those two worldviews has blurred. We never do learn what choice he made about Kevin, which makes sense theatrically, if not morally or magically. Who creates an illusion but refuses to complete it?To the extent the show’s tricks are meant to illustrate that story, they are effective. Many of the ones Guimarães learned from Kevin or saw him perfect — “second dealing, center dealing, stacking the deck, false shuffling, mucking” — are performed live during “The Future.” Narratively, that’s satisfying.Guimarães displays a hucksterish eagerness, but on Zoom, “pick a card, any card” doesn’t work.Credit…Geffen PlayhouseBut as magic for magic’s sake, the tricks, however brilliant, are baffling, for the very reason they succeed: They’re invisible. That’s especially the case on Zoom, where “pick a card, any card” doesn’t work.It’s less than awe-inspiring, for instance, that Guimarães has to tell us he has completed Kevin’s “cold deck” deception, a holy grail act of prestidigitation in which all 52 cards are secretly switched out for 52 others. On the evidence of our senses, nothing at all has happened except the elaborate setup and the surprising conclusion. I oohed but wasn’t sure what I was oohing at.Guimarães’s hucksterish eagerness, in contrast to his questing thoughtfulness in other contexts, doesn’t help in this one. As a workaround for the Zoom problem, he hammers so hard at the transparency of his deceptions that, like a character in a play, he invites skepticism about them. We know they are tricks; why keep badgering us to say that they aren’t?It’s misdirection, of course, the art of keeping our minds off whatever a magician doesn’t want us to notice. Kevin’s version, during that rigged poker game, was to have a confederate shatter a wineglass; on Zoom, with its lack of real eye contact, the task of distracting the eye is naturally much harder. That’s probably why a ticket to “The Future” includes a collection of props, including a deck of cards, mailed to each audience member in a chic black capsule: misdirection for the pandemic age.So although I admired Guimarães’s skill in “The Future” as much as I had in “The Present,” his previous show for the Geffen, I tired of his more elaborate tricks even faster than I did in the past. And though his storytelling — this time more evocatively realized in Frank Marshall’s direction — was lively, it wasn’t so distracting as to quell my suspicion that it was merely another form of misdirection.This suggests a genre problem. (Or it may just be a me problem; most of the 50 or so participants seemed to have a grand time throughout.) Magic, like ventriloquism, mind-reading, mime and other para-theatrical forms, has long sought greater legitimacy on what used to be called the legitimate stage. Working Vegas like some elephantless variety act is no longer enough for ambitious magicians; they aspire to the condition of drama.I think that’s a mistake. If the choice, as Guimarães expresses it, is between putting some wonder in the world and outsmarting people for money — tickets for “The Future” are $95 — I vote for wonder. I’d rather have some sequins and a rabbit than a three of clubs with a résumé.The FutureThrough March 14; geffenplayhouse.org.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More