Friday, April 01, 2005 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Magic Men

Rick Thomas and Dirk Arthur tap the afternoon family audience on the Strip

Rick Thomas, at home in a room of magic memorabilia, says running a successful show in Las Vegas is "more challenging than people know." Photo by Clint Karlsen. Dirk Arthur's Las Vegas experience dates back to 1987, including a six-year run as a "Jubilee" specialty act. Photo by Craig L. Moran.

When she first started school, a teacher was concerned that Rick and Kim Thomas' daughter lived in a fantasy world, talking about her tigers at home.

But tiger cubs are treated like pets in the Thomas household. The new one gets the run of the kitchen, but a doggie fence across the doorway separates him from the living room carpet.

And every day, Thomas and his assistant load three to six adult tigers onto a modified horse trailer (custom license plate: "Catillac") at his home near the Gilcrease Nature Sanctuary & Orchards, then head south on Interstate 15 to work.

The whole routine can seem so normal, Thomas says he was taken by surprise when he was talking to the guy putting up the marquee at his show's new home, the Stardust.

"I'm not really a star," Thomas told him, thinking of the evening headliners -- Wayne Newton, Ann-Margret and the like -- he's sharing the room with.

"If you're name is up on that marquee, you're a star," the sign-keeper insisted.

That's been the story of the past seven years. Dirk Arthur, the magician who takes over the Tropicana's afternoon slot from Thomas, now hopes to follow his quiet success, which is perhaps underplayed because it defies the currently marketed image of Las Vegas.

Both afternoon shows are value-priced and tap a family audience that didn't go away just because the Strip started pushing its nightclubs and the "Whatever happens here" campaign.

And the fact that tigers figure prominently in both shows suggests that even after Roy Horn's near-fatal tiger bite, the public hasn't retired its fascination with big cats in a Las Vegas magic show.

"The public still doesn't want the window to be closed," Thomas says.

Arthur opened his show at the Plaza not long before Horn's accident in October 2003. "The timing was a bit weird," he concedes. But his new show is titled "Xtreme Magic starring Dirk Arthur," and part of the extremity includes walking a tiger across the stage, just as Horn was doing when he was bitten.

Both illusionists live on rural acreage, where the care and feeding of exotic animals is such a time-consuming process the human element of a magic show almost seems secondary.

That's one reason why Arthur was happy to team up with producer David Saxe for his third attempt as a headliner; his top-billed shows at the Silverton and Plaza fell between stints as a specialty act in "Jubilee" and "Splash."

Saxe is the brother of "Melinda -- The First Lady of Magic," who stepped down from the family business for an extended maternity leave in 2002.

"I've always admired Dave's producing," Arthur says. "The things I'm not good at, David is brilliant at," he says of his admitted weaknesses in past solo efforts, such as choreographing the showgirls and theming the illusions.

"It's hard to be objective when you're onstage," Saxe says. "You can videotape each show and analyze it and try to be objective, but that can only get you to a certain level."

By stepping in as an outside producer, Saxe says he could ask fundamental questions that led to a complete overhaul of the show: Why is there a giant drill (in this illusion)? Why does this one use a disco ball? What's the set-up?

"He's got the biggest tricks in the business, probably the most expensive illusions of anyone I've worked with," Saxe says. "But you can't get away with just straight magic. It has to be a well-polished production show."

Thomas agrees the real trick is "to turn the audience from trying to figure it out to enjoying the show."

When Thomas started talking to the Tropicana in 1997, casino officials realized there was more potential than just putting him in the "Folies Bergere" as a specialty act.

But it took time and ticket sales for "The Illusionary Magic of Rick Thomas" to be granted the right to be more than a "front of curtain" show, gradually getting to use more and more of the Tropicana's backstage space.

"People thought it was going to be less of a show in the daytime," he says. "That's a stigma you have to get over."

Thomas is still chief cook and bottle-washer for his new production, "The Magic of Rick Thomas." He even makes up the print ads on his home computer. "It's more challenging than people know," he says. "You work harder here than you work anywhere else. You're not the only show in town."

Though many magicians have left Las Vegas, it's still perceived as a magic mecca by those who see only the marquees, not the business reality that most of the magic shows are produced without a guarantee from the host casino.

Thomas says 16- to 20-year-old guys ask him, "How did you make it in Vegas?" And he tells them, "I was on the road for 15 years, worked my tail off and had a show (ready) when I got here."

But now that Siegfried & Roy no longer dwarf any traditional magician who would move into an evening slot, Thomas believes "a night show is something that will be in my future." He says to "expect a grand statement on our relationship" from Boyd Gaming.

Not that he hasn't enjoyed having evenings at home with his son and daughter in a house that, like those of most magicians, is full of vintage posters for early-day magic stars and in this case, a life-sized pirate statue.

"Magicians lead the strangest lives," he confesses. "We're still little kids at heart."