Friday, November 07, 2003 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

SHOW REVIEW: Magic show offers something for everyone

Variety format revue at the Sahara needs better transitions and more interaction between acts

Kevin James, center, and diminutive assistant Arturo bring a silent movie comedy to life in "The World's Greatest Magic Show."

Calling yourself "The World's Greatest Magic Show" is a bold bit of Vegas ballyhoo which no reasonable person really expects a show to live up to. A more accurate, if less sexy title for the Sahara's new effort would be "The Strip's Least Generic Magic Show."

And that's still reason enough to celebrate.

Variety is the missing element in a lot of Las Vegas magic revues, so it's doubly good news that "The World's Greatest Magic Show" not only has a variety show format, but makes smart use of it. After all, what good would come of different magicians dividing up the same stock illusions?

This one has six featured acts, and not one of them saws a Lovely Assistant in half, slides her midsection out of a puzzle box or levitates her into the air. You'd think the Lovely Assistants got together and formed an anti-misogyny union or something.

Instead, producer Dick Feeney balances comedy with more dramatic stage effects, and traditionalists such as tuxedoed Joseph Gabriel with new-to-Las Vegas faces such as Nicholas Night, who works hard to frame his illusions with novel staging and a sense of whimsy.

Night makes his wife Kinga appear after spray painting her picture in the manner of a street performer, then changes the dress on both the image and her living counterpart. Later, he uses elements from a "trash can" to construct both a bicycle and its rider.

Gabriel was a 12-year performer in the Flamingo's old "City Lites" revue, and performs a silent act with birds that's almost redundantly similar to Monte Carlo star Lance Burton's, but no less astonishing. A multicolored parrot emerges from a tangle of red scarves, vying for attention with parakeets who walk up a ladder to their cage.

Kevin James (not the "King of Queens" star) is also familiar to veteran Las Vegas showgoers. After working his share of small shows, James has a field day with the generous stage built by the Sahara in 2000 for magician Steve Wyrick (who moves into the Aladdin later this month).

James seizes the opportunity to extend his silent-movie riff with diminutive assistant Arturo, as a Chaplin-esque sidekick, into a full-blown minimovie: The magician becomes a mad doctor who chain saws a colleague in half, but doesn't stop the man's legs from walking.

Comic host Jeff Hobson left the same job at The Venetian's similarly formatted "V -- The Ultimate Variety Show" for this one. His manic fusion of Paul Lynde and Steve Martin fills the vital roles of interacting with the audience and providing a thread of continuity for a format where one act follows another.

Feeney said he wanted the magicians to put up their best 10 or 12 minutes, which would keep them from having to resort to the stock illusions they use to pad full-length shows. Smart thinking, but it surprisingly doesn't serve all acts equally well.

The Majestix -- the team of Michael Giles and Stacy Jones -- come the closest to standard-issue Vegas magic, complete with the token appearance of a caged tiger. But they don't get enough stage time to establish an identity and underwhelm despite their impressive variation of the "cabinet switch": Jones switches sides of a two-sided structure as quickly as Giles can swing a panel from one side to the other.

And Monday's sparse audience didn't really go for the comedy act of Sylvester the Jester (Dan Sylvester). Billing himself as " a real live cartoon," Sylvester wears a a goofy red coat and green bow tie to talk in a Jerry Lewis voice as he brings "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" to life.

Smoke and sparks pour out of his ears. His face gets mashed into various shapes and rips off completely at one point. It's a great act for the Carrot Top crowd, but Monday's audience simply may have been too sober.

"World's Greatest" truly has something for everyone, but could still use better transitions than recorded introductions to get from one act to the next. The one exception, where Hobson uses pre-show warm-up act Billy Ferguson in a big illusion, points the way.

And magicians are such a fraternal bunch that you'd think Feeney -- who produces a Rat Pack tribute at the Greek Isles -- would have them interacting more onstage. Perhaps dueling card tricks, or some type of magical "showdown" at the end.

Give them time, and this variety show just might reach the full potential of its title.